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New Report: How Much Do Charter Schools Cost Public Schools? Plenty!

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2018 //
6

“In the Public Interest” released a new report about the cost of charter schools, and the money they drain from public schools that educate most students.

Here is the press release, with a link to the full report by Gordon Lafer, author of The One Percent Solution.

Report: Charter Schools Remove Tens of Millions in Funding from
Neighborhood School Students in Three California Districts

$142.6 Million Net Loss in School Districts in San Diego, Oakland, and San Jose,
While Student Needs Go Unmet

WASHINGTON – In a first of its kind analysis of three California school districts, researchers found that public school students are bearing the cost of charter schools’ rapid expansion. The report calculates the net fiscal impact of charter schools on three representative California school districts: San Diego, Oakland, and San Jose’s East Side Union High School District.

The analysis, Breaking Point: The Cost of Charter Schools for Public School Districts, conducted by In the Public Interest, a California-based think tank, with Dr. Gordon Lafer, examines the cumulative effect of charter schools on California school districts, which rank 42nd nationwide in per pupil spending. The number of California charter schools increased by more than 900 percent to more than 1,200 schools over the last two decades.

“Our analysis shows that the continued expansion of charter schools has steadily drained money away from school districts and concentrated high needs students in neighborhood public schools,” said Dr. Gordon Lafer, political scientist and professor at the University of Oregon. “The high costs of charter schools have led to decreases in neighborhood public schools in counseling, libraries, music and art programs, lab sciences, field trips, reading tutors, special education funding, and even the most basic supplies like toilet paper.”

The California Charter Schools Act does not allow school boards to consider how a charter school may impact a district’s educational programs or fiscal health when weighing new charter applications. However, when a student leaves a neighborhood public school for a charter school, all the funding for that student leaves with them, while all of the costs do not. This leads to cuts in core services like counseling, libraries, and special education and increased class sizes at neighborhood public schools.

San Diego Unified is the second-largest district in the state, with a combined enrollment of more than 128,000 students, and a total of 51 charter schools. Oakland Unified has 50,000 students and has the highest concentration of charter schools in the state. East Side Union High School District has a total enrollment of 27,000 and is comprised solely of high schools. Although the districts face unique challenges and student populations, they share similar financial challenges from charter school expansion.

“Unlimited charter school expansion is pushing some of California’s school districts toward a financial tipping point, from which they will be unable to return,” Dr. Lafer said.

The report recommends that each school district create an annual economic impact report to assess the cost of charter school expansion in its community. With consideration of economic impact, school districts could more effectively balance the value of a new charter school with the needs of neighborhood public school students.

Key findings from the report include:

• Oakland Unified loses $5,643 a year per charter school student while San Diego Unified loses $4,913 a year and East Side Unified loses $6,000 a year.

● Charter schools cost Oakland Unified $57.3 million per year, a sum several times larger than the forced drastic cuts to Oakland’s neighborhood school system this year.

● In East Side Union High School District, the net impact of charter schools amount to a loss of $19.3 million per year.

● Charter schools cost the San Diego Unified $65.9 million in 2016-17, $6 million more than the most recent round of budget cuts in early 2018.

● In Oakland, nearly 78 percent of students come from low-income families, are English language learners, or are foster youth, while 63 percent of students in San Diego Unified and 52.7 percent of students in East Side High School Unified share those backgrounds.

The report builds on previous studies that used different methodologies but came to similar conclusions. In the smaller cities of Buffalo, New York, and Durham, North Carolina, the net impact of charter schools was estimated as a loss of $25 million per year to the school district. In Nashville, Tennessee, the loss is approaching $50 million per year. And in Los Angeles—the nation’s second-largest school district—the net loss is estimated at over $500 million per year.

In the Public Interest is a nonprofit resource center that studies public goods and services.

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Read the report here.

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

California: Board Member Sued by Charter School Leader Responds

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2018 //
7

I posted earlier today that the ACLU was defending a school board member against intimidation tactics by a charter school leader, who threatened to sue her for doing her job and asking questions.

The board member, Claudia Rossi, posted this comment on the blog:

“I am a Latina who won a seat on the Santa Clara County Board of Education despite the over 200k the California Charter School Association spent against my campaign. I will continue to fight for our children using my vote and my voice to protect them from profiteering CMOS. Children are not commodities! This threat to sue me and other tactics only expose the true motives of the privatization jaugernaut. Mi voz y mi voto no se venden! My voice and my vote are not for sale! Nuestros hijos tampoco! Neither are our children!”

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

California: ACLU Rebukes Charter Leader Who Threatens to Sue School Board Member

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2018 //
23

 

A school board member in the Bay Area asked questions about the operations of a private charter school that was up for renewal. The charter CEO didn’t like her questions, and he threatened to sue her for defamation. She took his threats to the American Civil Liberties Union, and it agreed to defend her.

“The ACLU Foundation of Northern California is committed to fighting against spurious legal claims that threaten free speech. Especially when corporations and other powerful entities attempt to strong-arm people who have less resources at their disposal.

“This is exactly what happened to Claudia Rossi, a Bay Area school-board member and trustee, when she raised concerns about a private charter school at a public meeting during which board members were considering renewal of the school’s charter.

“Ms. Rossi’s inquiries were well within the scope of her official duties as a board member and trustee representing the public interest.

“Unfortunately, the charter school’s CEO responded to public criticism by threatening her with a lawsuit. In a threatening letter sent to Ms. Rossi, the CEO claimed her statements were defamatory and demanded she retract them and apologize publicly and in writing.

“This tactic—alleging defamation because one does not appreciate a comment, opinion, or line of questioning—is as prevalent as it is problematic. And it threatens our country’s commitment to open discourse. “

Unfortunately the charter industry tends to resort to bullying tactics to get more public money and have their wishes prevail. For example, when they close their schools and bus their students, staff, and even parents to political rallies, all dressed in matching T-shirts, carrying posters expressing their demands for more money, more autonomy, faster closings of public schools. Any public school that did that would be immediately investigated, and the principal would be fired for engaging in political activities.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Sacramento Bee Endorses Newsom and Chiang, Warns Against Charter Expansion

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2018 //
22

In an editorial about the gubernatorial race in California, the Sacramento Bee endorsed former San Francisco MayorG avin Newsom and State Treasurer John Chiang. It specifically rejected former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa because of his alliance with the charter school industry.

What was crucial in its decision, says the editorial, was the charter school issue.

Gov. Jerry Brown is a hard act to follow. No California governor has served longer, or more consequentially.

In the past eight years alone – his second stint in the office – the state has gone from a $27 billion budget deficit to a $6 billion surplus. Unemployment has fallen from 12.2 percent to 4.3 percent, a record. Along the way, Brown has realigned the state’s criminal justice system, overhauled public school finance, licensed more than a million undocumented drivers, put the state at the forefront of addressing climate change and taught Californians a little Latin.

Whoever succeeds him will not only have to pick up where he left off on those issues, but also maintain his defense of California against Trump administration assaults on our environment, trade, diversity and tolerant values. Not to mention our many in-state challenges – affordable housing, health care, underfunded public employee pensions, higher education, water policy and so on. Oh, and the near-term likelihood of a downturn in the state economy.

So voters have their work cut out on June 5 in culling two candidates from a field of more than two dozen contenders. A few prospects are prepared, but let us stipulate: None are Jerry Brown.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom sat down with the Sacramento Bee Editorial Board to discuss affordable housing, the California economic divide and other key election issues ahead of the June 5 primary. Emily ZentnerSacramento Bee Editorial Board

The best-equipped candidate for the economy to come – state Treasurer John Chiang – is running an anemic campaign and is probably terminally underfunded. The best-financed and most experienced candidates – former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom – have, in their personal lives, made unnerving and public errors in judgment.

More immediately, there are the great gobs of money from billionaire charter school advocates going to independent expenditure campaigns backing Villaraigosa. Though Newsom, too, has his billionaires – hello, Silicon Valley – the charter movement has direct implications for public schools in California.

It is largely because of this latter development that our top two endorsements go to Newsom and Chiang.

Newsom, the 50-year-old frontrunner in the polls, has been running for governor for so long, and has put so much thought into the matter, that when he speaks, his positions manage to sound both glib and over-detailed. That’s too bad: His principles, hedged though they often seem, generally channel the liberal majority of this blue state.

Like Brown, he’s for strong climate policy, locally focused school finance and aggressive use of the courts to beat back the overreaches of the Trump administration. But he departs from the governor on some other popular but expensive points. He says higher education should get more state funding, as should universal preschool, and he advocates – rashly, given the cost – single-payer health care, a position that has endeared him to California progressives.

If he gets elected and the state economy dips, as experts expect, he will surely disappoint them.

Chiang, 55, may not have Newsom’s San Francisco charisma, but he does know economics. Call him a wonk, but so is Brown, and like Brown, he knows the value of deliberation and frugality.

Since his 1997 appointment to the state Board of Equalization, Chiang, a child of Taiwanese immigrants and a graduate of Georgetown law school, has served in a series of statewide offices with, as he puts it, “no drama.”

That hasn’t meant no guts: As controller, he withheld legislators’ paychecks after they blew a voter-approved deadline for passing the budget; some still haven’t forgiven him. During the recession, he also refused an order from then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to slash state workers’ pay.

He downplays his personal story, though it is compelling; his sister was brutally murdered when he was a young man, and his family encountered blistering racism during his childhood in suburban Chicago. Like Newsom, he champions public schools, and his ideas to address the state housing crisis with a big housing bond have been both sensible and aggressive. It’s too bad his campaign is such a dud; he’s the best choice for fiscally conscious Californians – and for Republicans who might want to vote strategically and try to get a moderate in the November general election in this heavily Democratic state.

Villaraigosa, 65, would give Newsom the toughest runoff in November. He was Assembly Speaker and ran California’s largest and most complicated city during the worst of the recession; once an up-from-the-streets labor organizer, he has become more pragmatic with age.

But his alliance with rich charter school advocates in Los Angeles could backfire at the state level. Privately operated public charter schools have been an important alternative in low-income districts, but they also have pulled students – and enrollment-based state and federal funds – out of the regular school system.

In the L.A. schools, where the charter billionaires and Villaraigosa worked together with the best intentions, that trend, combined with soaring pension obligations, has spawned a financial disaster. Now comes a $12.5 million independent expenditure for Villaraigosa from charter philanthropists Eli Broad, Reed Hastings of Netflix and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The charter school issue is as important to get right as it is divisive. California has challenges enough without letting its factions hijack the governor’s race.

This is a remarkable turnaround for the Bee, because in the past it was an unabashed cheerleader for charter schools. When I visited Sacramento several years back, I met with the editorial board. It was cool to the point of being hostile because of my criticism of charters. At that time, Michelle Rhee was a star who had recently married the mayor of Sacramento. So, either the internal dynamics of the Bee editorial has changed, or the membership of the board changed, or the board learned more about the charter industry. Whatever the reason, this endorsement is great news. It demonstrates that the bloom is off the rose for charter schools, and the billionaires who back them.

The Network for Public Education Action Fund endorsed John Chiang because of his clarity about the negative fiscal impact on the state’s public schools. Hopefully, Gavin Newson will learn from the Bee editorial that it is safe to support traditional public schools, which enroll the vast majority of the students in California, instead of an aggressive industry that promises more than it delivers. At least, do no harm.

The times, they are a’ changing.

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

Puerto Rico: Privatizing Public Schools in Puerto Rico

By dianeravitch
May 5, 2018 //
17

Puerto Rico is part of the United States. You would not know that if you paid attention to the neglect of the Island’s needs since Hurricane Maria. Just as the privateers took advantage of Hurricane Katrina to wipe out public schools in New Orleans, they are now moving swiftly to replace public schools in Puerto Rico with charter schools and vouchers. The privatizers are using their familiar tactics of disruption and chaos to shatter communities and displace students and families. The rationale is unexplained.

The austerity measures imposed on the residents have led to violent clashes and tear-gassing of resistors. 

Consider the following information, compiled by the AFT:

Consider the following:

Puerto Rico School Closings: Background

On April 5, Puerto Rico’s Secretary of Education Julia Keleher announced that Puerto Rico would be shuttering 283 schools by September 2018. Those closings would affect nearly 60,000 students and 6,000 teachers and could cause thousands of educators to leave their jobs. This would have a devastating impact on families and communities in Puerto Rico as the island works to recover and grow. Economists have been arguing that the single most important group to keep on the island to stabilize the economic outlook of Puerto Rico are families whose plans for returning or reestablishing normalcy are thrown into chaos.

A small group in the Puerto Rico Education Department proposed the school closing with no input from stakeholders, no visits to schools and using an database that was never shared with the public.

The education secretary for Puerto Rico has admitted that at no time did they do an analysis of any of the school being closed or the impact on students at the closed schools.

The latest round of closings comes less than a year after Puerto Rico closed 167 schools, bringing the total number of schools closed within one year to 450. This represents more than a third of its public schools, though the island’s population has decreased by only 9 percent over the past seven years.

The latest closings also come on the heels of an earlier, smaller round of school closings that occurred due to population loss. Between 2010 and 2015, Puerto Rico closed another 150 public schools in order to deal with population loss.

In addition to the school closings, the U.S. Secretaryof Education Betsy DeVos has been working with Puerto Rico closely to pass legislation to introduce charter schools and vouchers in Puerto Rico. The bill was drafted by a team from Betsy DeVos’s U.S. Education Department, with very little or no input from stakeholders in Puerto Rico.

The closure of schools was built on misleading information.

Initially the Puerto Rican government promised cost savings from closing schools.

o The Government of Puerto Rico has been unable to sell any previously closed schools and is leasing 50 schools out of more than 300 available schools for $1 annually.

o The Governor subsequently acknowledged that there is very little cost savings from closing schools.

o The Governor’s latest statement tracks with studies about school closing in other states that found like one from Pew research that found municipalities get a fraction of the savings they budget for, when they close schools.

o Meanwhile the government just passed voucher and charter school legislation written by DeVos that would cost the Puerto Rico up to $400 million a year.

o As the plan to close schools, the fiscal plan approved by the fiscal oversight board includes more than $7 billion in debt service over five years to vulture funds at the expense of schools and recovery.

The Puerto Rico Secretary of Education had previously argued that school closing were driven by the fiscal board required it. In a recent interview with Telemundo, Jose Carrion, Chairman of the Fiscal Control Board, said the Fiscal Board did not require the closing of schools.

There’s not a transparent and coherent process for why schools are being closed. Various arguments have been made that are sometimes at odds with each other.

On Friday April 20th, the Department of Education indicated that it had not conducted an updated analysis of which schools were being closed, their impact on the education of kids in the schools or whether receiving schools had the resources to help the incoming kids. The Department also indicated that despite protests from mayors, parents and teachers that the list of 283 would not change under any circumstance.

o On Saturday April 21st, The Department of Education sent out a press release that they would make changes to the number of schools being closed.

o Two days later the education department removed six schools from the list and added three new schools to the list.

The schools on the closure list were not selected using an understandable and transparent process. In fact, a quick review of the latest school performance and demographic data shows a number of troubling facts. It is critical that education officials explain how these schools were selected.

Of the 50 poorest schools (at least 95 percent poverty), 21 are slated to close.

Of the 50 least poor schools (56 percent poverty or less), all are expected to remain open.

Among the 50 schools with the lowest proficiency (9 percent proficient or less), 11 schools are slated for closure.

Among the 50 schools with the highest proficiency (90 percent proficient or better), 22 schools are slated for closure.

58 of the 283 schools scheduled to be closed are rated good or excellent by the Department of education

40 percent of the children in the schools slated to closed are special needs students, including children with autism.

There was no consultation with teachers, parents and community leaders before the school closure list was finalized.

There was no transparency to the school closure process other than what we read in the press.
There is real human and economic impact to the school closures that has not been considered. No one has performed an economic impact on school closure in Puerto Rico.

A department of education offical visited a recently built modern school with air conditioning and computer labs slated for closing and told teachers that the school would be perfect for a charter school operator.

The Secretary of Education went on the record to confirm that she is closing a Montessori school because administrators refused to allow the school to become a charter.

Local mayors find the school closings so disruptive that they’ve petitioned the government to take over operations of the schools.

In Lares a school closing will impact four communities in the surrounding area forcing students to commute for an extra hour to 2 hours a day.

Mercedes is a beloved neighborhood school in San Juan where teachers have invested hundreds of dollars for supplies and the school where they are supposed to go has a lower rating and is located in a violent area.

Manuel Caves is a school slated for closing that had a waiting list last year.

In Arecibo, the only bilingual school is being closed.
A school closing in Barceloneta offers pre-vocational courses, and there is no indication that the new school will continue the program.

A school closing in Bayamon, Papa Juan XXIII High School, specializes in mathematics and science. It has an enrollment of 346, and its honor roll is made up of 320 students. These students receive multiple math, science and English classes during the year. Last year, five students in grade 11 went directly to college.

A school being closed in Humacao, Su Luciano Rios, won a robotics championship in 2017.

A school that specializes in baseball is slated to close in Comerío. Keleher argued that the closing was due to poor conditions, but reporters found the school to be in great physical conditions, with the municipality providing maintenance services for the school.

There are dozens of receiving schools that are too far from the closing school. Teachers feel that some receiving schools are too dangerous for students.
In multiple instances, receiving schools have facility problems that can’t accommodate incoming students, or problems with bathrooms or clean water.

All in all, the department of education under Keleher has made no effort to reach out to and work with teachers and parents about what closing their school would mean for students. There are no indications that any thought has been put into the logistics of disrupting the lives of 60,000 students by talking to the adult guardians or teachers of these kids.

New stories emerge daily about communities and schools impacted because there has been no analysis. The list above is just a sample of problems.

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

Texas: Municipal Bond Firms Side with Traditional Public Schools Against Charters

By dianeravitch
May 5, 2018 //
7

 

The agencies in Texas that finance municipal debt are choosing sides against charter schools. This is good news, but it should not be surprising because charter schools are risky, while traditional schools are not.

”Some Texas public finance firms are choosing sides in the escalating battle between traditional public school districts and charter schools.

“Earlier this year, Hilltop Securities, the state’s perennial leader among municipal advisers, dropped nine charter school clients to demonstrate its support for traditional districts.

”’Initially, we saw assisting charter schools as the firm enhancing our long history of support [for] primary/secondary education,” Hilltop chairman Hill Feinberg wrote in a Jan. 24 letter to Keller Independent School District Chief Financial Officer Mark Youngs. “Hilltop Securities will continue to honor our commitment to those relationships with Texas Independent School Districts by no longer representing charter schools in Texas as advisor, underwriter, placement agent or investment advisor.’”

Some bankers are starting their own firms specifically to finance charter schools.

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

Arizona: Can #RedForEd Stop Rampant Privatization?

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2018 //
27

 

Eric Blanc, writing in the Jacobin magazine, describes the epic battle that is unfolding in Arizona between the privatization movement and most of the state’s teachers. 

For most of the past two decades, the archconservatives and ALEC have sought to destroy public education in the state.

Can the striking teachers change the narrative?

”Winning won’t be easy. Arizona’s educators have powerful enemies. And the prevalence of charter schools across the state is a serious obstacle in the current strike. But if Red For Ed can sustain its momentum in the coming days and months, it just might be able to reverse the privatizing tide…

”Arizona has long been a favored target of the right-wing Koch Institute and ALEC, a hyper-conservative Koch-funded corporate legislation mill. A number of leading Arizonan politicians are deeply embedded in, and indebted to, these bodies. Governor Doug Ducey has been part of the Koch network since 2011 and more than a third of Republican legislators were wined and dined last year at ALEC’s annual summit to promote “free-market” model legislation.”

Beth Lewis, a leader of the #RedForEd movement, said last week,

“Why are teachers being forced to do more with less every single year? Our legislators, our state leaders, simply refuse to invest in our public schools. Our governor and many of our state leaders are being propped up by out-of-state big money donors. That’s the reason we are here. These people want to push things like voucher schemes to take money out of our already starving public schools.”

The state is awash in charter schools and voucher schools. And behind many of them is the pursuit of money.

“Since 1994, Arizona has witnessed a proliferation of state-financed but privately run charter schools. With over 180,000 charter students, Arizona now has proportionally more than any state in the US. ALEC was clearly justified in ranking Arizona number one in its Report Card on American Education.

“Many of these schools generate millions of dollars in private revenue. In 2014–2015, for example, BASIS charter schools made just under$60 million for the for-profit BASIS corporation that services its schools. “It’s true that some charters want to do right by students and staff, but they are few and far between,” notes Owen Kerr, a ninth-year Arizonan math teacher who was formerly employed at Imagine and BASIS charter schools. “Business is business. So I can see that though a number of charters try to do things differently, most are set up to make money.”

Charter schools are largely unaccountable. Teacher turnover is high. Working conditions are poor.

“The negative effects of privatization go far beyond draining public funds. Unlike real public schools, which are generally subject to the oversight of democratically elected school boards and superintendents, charters are accountable only to their own internal boards plus the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools, whose members are appointed by the governor. In the absence of real oversight, Arizona’s charters have been plagued by fraud and financial scandals…

”Politicians like Governor Ducey tout the high test scores achieved by charter schools such as BASIS, while conveniently overlooking the fact that these scores were produced by excluding or pushing out students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Many working-class families are deterred from applying to charter lotteries, since charters do not have to provide free lunch or transportation to school, unlike regular public institutions. For students who do make it into the charter system, rates of attrition are very high. Arizona charters are often particularly inhospitable to students with special needs or learning disabilities. Kevin Brown, a school psychologist in the Washington Elementary School District, notes that “‘school choice’ is just a nice way of saying that all the high performers need to be segregated from low performers (students and families who are disadvantaged socially and economically).”

The #RedForEd movement has awakened the public to the dire condition of education in Arizona. Will the public stay awake?

We will find out in November, when the reactionary Governor Ducey faces a Democratic opponent, educator David Garcia, who is allied with the striking teachers.

 

 

 

 

 

Categories ALEC, Arizona, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Koch Brothers, Privatization

LAUSD Will Pay Zillionaire Banker $350,000 As Superintendent

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2018 //
59

Parent activists are still in a state of shock in Los Angeles in reaction to the board’s selection of the totally unqualified banker Austin Beutner as Superintendent. 

Reportedly a billionaire like his pal Eli Broad, although possibly only a multimillionaire, he will be paid $350,000 for his inexperience.

The first order of business will be downsizing the district, which has lost students to charter schools. Instead of fighting to regain students, Beutner will encourage the growth of privatization.

He is the quintessential corporate reformer who can be counted on to bring the mindset of a corporate raider: cut costs, cut staff, reorganize, downsize.

Beutner is everything that Broad loves in a Superintendent: a reformer dedicated to swing the axe, close schools, and fire educators.

Howard Blume writes:

””Beutner and members of the board majority seem unlikely to continue targeting charter schools as part of the problem. On the contrary, they are widely expected to take steps to encourage their growth in a range of schooling options for families, especially with academic performance lagging at many traditional campuses.

”That means the district has to look to other ways to increase revenue — a goal held in common with the prior board — and may try to reduce district spending by shrinking the traditional school system. Savings could come through employee layoffs, closing campuses and freezing or reducing salaries and benefits.”

 

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization

Steven Singer on “Democrats” for High-Stakes Testing and Privatization of Public Schools

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2018 //
25

 

Steven Singer reviews the decision by the Colorado Democratic party to tell the “Democrats for Education Reform” to stop calling themselves “Democrats.” DFER, he writes, is neither “Democrat” nor is it advocating for “education reform.” It is a group of wealthy hedge fund managers who pour large amounts of money into election to promote standardization, profitization, and privatization. They are clueless about the value of public schools and about the needs of students and teachers. They don’t care. They have money and they do what they want, without regard to collateral damage.

He writes:

Henceforth, “Education Reform” shall be Education Sabotage – because that’s really what it is.

It is about deliberately obstructing goods and services that otherwise would help kids learn and repurposing them for corporate benefit.

Likewise, I propose we stop using the term “School choice.” Instead, call it what it is – School Privatization.

Anyone who uses the older terms is either misguided or an enemy of authentic education.

Perhaps this seems petty.

They’re only words, after all. What does it matter?

It matters a lot.

As Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote:

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”

We cannot effectively fight the forces of segregation, standardization and privatization if we have to constantly define our terms.

Professor Maurice Cunningham of the University of Massachusetts, who specializes in the deployment of Dark Money to promote school privatization, has suggested the term “Financial Privatization Cabal.” Great term, too many syllables.

We could just call them the “Privatizers,” because that is the word that represents the common goal of DFER and Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump, Scott Walker, Rick Scott, and the other thieves of language and the common good.

Categories Charter Schools, Democrats for Education Reform, DFER, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing

NPE Action Fund Endorses Elizabeth Markowitz for Texas State Board of Education

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2018 //
1

 

The Network for Public Education Action Fund endorses Elizabeth Markowitz for a seat on the Texas State Board of Education.  

The Network for Public Education Action is pleased to announce its strong support for Elizabeth (Eliz) Markowitz for the Texas State Board of Education, District 7. Dr. Markowitz is a highly qualified candidate. She told us, “I’ve been an educator at various public Texas institutions for the past 15 years, have authored and co-authored a number of books focused on various academic subjects, worked with future school teachers to prepare them for the classroom, and received my doctorate in Curriculum & Instruction – Learning, Design, and Technology.”

Her stand on our issues is certainly aligned. Her priorities are curriculum reform, improving the way we attract, train, and retain educators, and revising the Texas approach to standardized testing. She believes in community governance of schools and small class sizes. Here is what she had to say regarding vouchers and charters:

I do not support “school choice” schemes that use public school funds to support charter, private, or sectarian schools. I believe that public tax money should only be used to support a system of free public schools, and I oppose the implementation of school voucher or tax credit programs that harm the Texas public school system both financially and academically. The rise of charter schools in Texas has led to increasing inequity in the education of our youth, as it benefits the affluent and harms the underprivileged. I have not advocated for a charter school.

For all of the above and more, we give our strong support to Elizabeth Markowitz. Please be sure to vote for her in November.

You can find a copy of the this endorsement here: http://npeaction.org/2018/04/27/npe-action-endorses-elizabeth-markowitz-texas-state-board-education/

Carol Burris

Executive Director of NPE Action

Pol. adv. by NPE Action

Donations to NPE Action (a 501(c)(4)) are not tax deductible, but they are needed to lobby and educate the public about the issues and candidates we support.

Please make a donation today.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, NPE Action Fund, Privatization, Texas
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