Archives for category: Education Industry
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Gary Rubinstein: A Model of Abject Failure: The Tennessee Achievement School District

By dianeravitch
February 4, 2018 //
5

 

Gary Rubinstein has chronicled the creation, the hype, the premature claims of success, and the utter collapse of the Tennessee Achievement School District.

It was created with Race to the Top funding. It promised to take the schools ranked in the bottom 5% of the state and “catapult” them to the top 25%. This would take only five years. It would be done by turning them into charter schools.

But, five years later, Rubinstein finds, 5 of the six original schools are still in the bottom 5%, and the sixth is in the bottom 9%.

Tennessee ‘Cusp List’ 2017: 5 of 6 Of Original ASD Schools Still In Bottom 5%

This outcome could be fairly characterized as abject failure.

Unfortunately, reformers are never deterred by failure. Several other states, including Nevada, Georgia, and North Carolina have started a similar program, modeled on the Tennessee ASD.

Worse, the ASD concept is embedded in the federal Every Student Succeeds act, which directs states to develop a plan to intervene in the schools in the lowest performing 5%.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Failure, Privatization, Tennessee

Peter Greene: Why the Charter Movement is Declining

By dianeravitch
February 3, 2018 //
11

 

The original idea on the Charter Movement was noble: Teachers would create them as part of their school or district; they would seek out the most vulnerable students, the ones who had dropped out or who slept through class. They would use their freedom from the usual rules to find new ways to educate the reluctant students.

That was Albert Shanker’s vision. He sold it to his members in 1988 and kept selling it until 1993, when he announced in his weekly paid column in the New York Times that charters were no different from vouchers. He declared that business was moving into the charter industry and using it to break teachers’ unions and destroy public schools. Too late. The movement went into high gear, and the sector turned into a.m. industry, with corporate chains and for-profits, relying on inexperienced teachers and cutting costs (teacher salaries).

But suddenly, the Charter Movement has stalled. New ones still open, and old ones close, for financial or academic reasons.

Peter Greene here assesses the report from the charter-friendly Center on Reinventing Public Education. Peter has a somewhat different take than the previous post by Steven Singer.

The bottom line is the same. The charter industry literally wants free space by closing public schools. They can’t hold on to teachers, not only because of low wages, but because of poor working conditions. The teachers they attract are not in education as a career but as a stepping stone.

And two other factors hobble the growth of charters. First, most don’t keep their promises; they are not better than public schools. Second, the public reads almost daily about charters that close in mid-year, Charter founders who were convicted of theft, charter leaders using public funds as an ATM.

Peter Greene writes about the report’s “Solutions”:

“CRPE wraps up the report with some proposed solutions to the problems listed above. These are…. well, these are solutions only if you decide that the interests of charter operators are the only interests that need to be served.

“Facility shortage? Make public districts hand over more publicly owned property to charter schools, change zoning laws, and get the legislature to underwrite the funding charters need to grab real estate. And create a commission to “coordinate” the handover of public facilities to private charter operators.

“Bad competition? Create some central planning authority to coordinate the expansion strategies of charters. How that translates into anything other than telling charters where they’re allowed to expand, and how THAT translates into anything other than charter operators saying, “No, I don’t want to” is not clear. CRPE acknowledges that no charters are saying, “Please give us less autonomy.”

“Staff? Do some recruiting. From wherever.

“Limited choices? Increase a diverse supply of operators. Man. Why is it that people whose whole argument is “Free market! Free Market!” do not understand how the free market works. The free market does not give you what you wish for– it gives you what it thinks it can make money giving you. It may be cool to think, “Wow! With 500 cable channels, we could have an arts channel and a stand-up comedy channel and a channel with nothing but music videos,” but the free market does not care what you think would be cool. Well, says CRPE, we could invest heavily in the more diverse models. Who would do that, and why?

“More data? CRPE thinks more data about the charter market is needed. Who would collect that, and why?

“Toxic local politics? Maybe charter operators could negotiate some sort of deal whereby they didn’t completely suck the financial life blood out of public schools (and the schools would hand over real estate just to, you know, be cool).. Maybe they could keep trying to pack local school boards. Maybe they could convince district leaders to “think of their jobs as overseeing a broad portfolio of options with various governance models” except of course some of the items in the portfolio they “oversee” would be completely outside of their control and would be hostile and damaging to the parts of their portfolio that they are actually, legally responsible. Honestly, most of these solutions boil down to “let’s wish real hard that public school people will just like us more because it’s inconvenient for us when they don’t.”

“Bottom line

“I’m happy to see the modern charter tide ebbing. And I’m not sad to see that folks like CRPE and the interviewees don’t really have a handle on why it’s happening. I agree that it doesn’t have to be this way, but it will be this way as long as modern charter boosters fail to acknowledge their major systemic issues, insist on inadequate funding in a zero-sum system, disenfranchise the public, underperform in educating students, and behave as businesses rather than schools. As I said above, time is not on their side, and neither is their inability to grasp the problems they create for public education in this country.”

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

Steven Singer: Charter-Friendly Group Reports Dramatic Decline in New Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
February 3, 2018 //
14

 

Steven Singer reviews a new report from the Center for Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington. This is a Gates-funded think tank whose belief is that the best way to “reinvent” public schools is to privatize them.

The charter sector had been booming but this past year, the boom fizzled. What once seemed to be an unstoppable steam roller, intent on crushing public schools, has slowed to a crawl.

The problems, says the report, are real estate cost, teacher shortages, and political backlash.

Singer writes:

“How did the hippest new thing to hit education since the chalk board suddenly hit such a wall? After all, it wasn’t so long ago that every celebrity from Magic Johnson to Andre Agassi to Deion Sanders to Sean “Puffy” Combs to Pitt Bull had their own charter school. Even Oprah Winfrey, the queen of multimedia, donated millions to charter networks in Louisiana, California, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Texas and her home state of Illinois.

“How could something with so much high profile support be running out of gas?

“The Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) has a theory.

“The charter school funded think tank (read: propaganda network) released a report boiling the issue down to three factors: real estate costs, a teacher shortage and political backlash.

“Real estate costs? Yes, few public schools want to offer you public property to put your privately run school that will inevitably gobble up a good portion of its funding and turn a portion of that into profit for private investors.

“Teacher shortage? Yes, when you pay your educators the least, don’t allow your employees to unionize, and demand high hours without remuneration, you tend to find it harder than most educational institutions to find people willing to work for you.

“Political backlash? DING! DING! DING!

“Of course, most people who aren’t paid by the charter school industry – as those working for CRPE are – would simply call this a charter school backlash – not political, at all.

“This isn’t one political party seeking advantage over another. It’s concerned citizens from both sides of the aisle worried about the practices of the charter school industry.”

Singer’s post includes some nifty charts. Be sure to open it.

The bottom line is that the bloom is off the rose.

The public is beginning to understand that charter schools are meant to destabilize their community public schools. They take away money meant for the public schools. They take the students they want and exclude those they don’t want. They open and close like day lilies. The for-profits are interested in profit, not education.

And it destroys their reputation when the public knows that Trump, DeVos, Wall Street, and the Koch brothers are leading the charge to destroy what belongs to the entire community.

Resist!

 

 

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

Charter Champion Ousted After Charges of Sexually Inappropriate Behavior

By dianeravitch
February 3, 2018 //
22

 

Jeremiah Kittredge, one of the leaders of the charter movement, was just terminated as leader of “Families for Excellent Schools.” (FES was banned from Massachusetts for campaign finance violations in the charter referendum of 2016 and fined nearly $500,000.)

https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2018/02/02/charter-champions-firing-came-after-sexual-harassment-allegations-233549

Politico writes:

“For years, Jeremiah Kittredge has been a darling of the national charter school movement’s wealthiest and most powerful benefactors.

“Since starting the pro-charter organization Families for Excellent Schools in 2011, he’s courted reform-friendly governors and members of Congress, funded his group with tens of millions of dollars from America’s wealthiest financiers and philanthropic organizations, and emerged as perhaps the closest ally to the country’s most well-known charter school leader, Success Academy CEO Eva Moskowitz.

“That all ended Wednesday, when Bryan Lawrence — a banker who sits on Families for Excellent Schools’ board — blasted out a statement to reporters that Kittredge had been “terminated” following an outside law firm’s investigation into allegations of “inappropriate behavior toward a non-employee.”

“That incident took place last November at a Washington, D.C., hotel during the Philos conference, an annual gathering hosted by Education Reform Now, the policy affiliate of the advocacy organization Democrats for Education Reform, sources tell POLITICO.

“A woman who attended the conference wrote a Facebook post a few weeks afterward, describing an encounter with another conference attendee. Five sources with knowledge of the situation confirmed that the attendee referenced in the post was Kittredge. The sources requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic.

“Just three weeks ago, at the single ed reform conference I attend each year, another attendee, a guy much younger than me, sticks his head in my chest, tells me my boobs are supple (seriously? Who uses that word?) and then rides up an elevator with me late at night commenting on how big my boobs are,” the female attendee wrote.”

Who knew that Camp Philos could be so racy, boorish, and stupid? Power corrupts.

Calling Campbell Brown! She made her name complaining about sexual predators in public schools. Now charters need her too.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry

Fryer and Dobbie: Texas Charter Schools Have No Effect on Test Scores and a Negative Effect on Earnings

By dianeravitch
February 2, 2018 //
8

This is a favorite of mine. Roland Fryer is an economist at Harvard whose work has been heavily subsidized by Eli Broad and Bill Gates. He is a great believer in incentives and choice.

Thus, it was quite surprising to read this study (which I wrote about here).

This is the key finding.

We estimate the impact of charter schools on early-life labor market outcomes using administrative data from Texas. We find that, at the mean, charter schools have no impact on test scores and a negative impact on earnings. No Excuses charter schools increase test scores and four-year college enrollment, but have a small and statistically insignificant impact on earnings, while other types of charter schools decrease test scores, four-year college enrollment, and earn- ings. Moving to school-level estimates, we find that charter schools that decrease test scores also tend to decrease earnings, while charter schools that increase test scores have no discernible impact on earnings

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing, Texas

Arizona: Bradley Success Academy Charter Schools Suddeny Closes, Leaving Students in the Lurch

By dianeravitch
February 1, 2018 //
11

 

Just two days ago, the Bradley Success Academy in Goodyear, Arizona, shuttered, stranding its students.

The school sent a letter to parents expressing its regret.

One parent said she was finished with charter schools.

“”I will never put my child in another charter school again … because they are financially unstable,” Stephanie McMullen said.

“And then there are the practical concerns.

“I’m afraid he’s going to be behind and other kids like him are going to be behind,” McMullen said. “It’s not right. Teachers are out of work, too.”

“Preschool teacher Michelle Miller is one of them.

“For all the hard work that we’ve done all year long, it’s heartbreaking that they would do something like this to us,” she said as she held back tears.”

The school enrolled 450 students. It was started in 2003.it was managed by for-profit Imagine, which has a record of making money in real estate.

A reader of the Blog alerted me with this comment:

“And, another charter school closed its doors abruptly. The Bradley Success Academy shuttered his doors & locked the gate in Goodyear, Az,. a small suburb to the west of Phoenix. (One of those cookie cutter developments built on the edges of an old western town) It signed charter papers in 2003. The letter cited overwhelming financial problems. In looking through their Facebook pages, it seems many parents were unhappy. The Facebook page also touted their expertise in Special Ed. But, looking at the credentials and expenses, no monies were spent on Spec. Ed. Could be wrong, I’m not an expert at finacial reporting.

“I am currently investigating how much money they’re going to abscond with. One of the things that stood out in the financial report turned into Arizona Department of Education is they have over $8 million worth of capitol assets. Didn’t see any real problems with finances, other than revenue & expenses don’t quite line up.

“One of the charter holders is Paula Poultridge, Regional finance Director for Imagine Schools. Hmmmm…………………something to look at?”

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

Bill Phillis: Ohio Wasted $10 Billion on Charters

By dianeravitch
February 1, 2018 //
18

Bill Phillis of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy reports that public schools are welcoming back students who enrolled in the failed Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT).

He writes:

“Trumbull County school districts welcoming ECOT students back

“The public school district is the best choice-the real choice-for students. Misleading ads and false promises by the charter industry have enticed lots of students. Public school districts need to put out the welcome mat for ECOT students.

“After an expenditure of $10 billion and nearly two decades of low academic performance and graduation rates, it is clear the Ohio charter experiment is a failure. Public school districts are the best choice. Additionally, the scope of programs, services and curriculum in most charters is scant. And, of course, the industry is rife with scandal, double dealing, non-transparency, nepotism and inefficiencies.”

William L. Phillis | Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding | 614.228.6540 | ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net| http://www.ohiocoalition.org

 

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Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Atlanta: Charter School Boss Pleads Guilty to Theft of Funds

By dianeravitch
January 31, 2018 //
11

 

Once a bright light of the charter industry, Chris Clemons pleaded guilty to major thefts from the school he founded and led and is now bound for prison.

http://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/former-charter-school-director-expected-to-plead-guilty

“An Atlanta charter school founder has pleaded guilty Tuesday to stealing more than half a million dollars from local public school systems.

“The former principal at Latin Academy, Chris Clemons, pleaded guilty to over 50 counts of theft and five counts of forgery after a hearing and sentencing that lasted about two  hours.

“Clemons was accused of defrauding three Atlanta area schools, and forcing at least one, the Latin Academy, to close because of a lack of funds. He faced up to 865 years in prison and $5.5 million in fines.

”The state alleged that the 39-year-old Clemon spent more than $50,000 to Atlanta strip clubs and made countless cash withdrawals.

“Parents said they were devastated when they learned what Clemons was doing.

“In the end, he has been ordered to pay $810,000 in restitution and was sentenced to 20 years, 10 to serve and 10 on probation.”

The moral of the story is that public money must be accompanied by public oversight.

Mercedes Schneider wrote about Clemons’ sterling resume. He was trained by Boston’s reformer “Building Excellent Schools” then earned an MBA at MIT, where he was featured for his vision and dedication to children.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/deutsch29.wordpress.com/2016/06/05/atlanta-charter-fraudster-chris-clemons-was-an-mit-featured-attraction-in-2007/amp/

Even for MIT grads, crime doesn’t pay.

 

Categories Accountability, Atlanta, Education Industry, Fraud, Privatization

California: Charter Industry Defeats Effort to Impose Accountability and Transparency

By dianeravitch
January 31, 2018 //
40

 

The powerful California Charter School Association collected enough votes to defeat AB 1478, an effort to establish accountability and transparency for charters, introduced by Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer, a Democrat from Los Angeles.

Here is the proposed legislation. It called for transparency and accountability and prohibited conflicts of interest. What a radical proposal! Imagine charter schools holding open meetings, making their records public, and prohibited from financial self-dealing with related companies owned by relatives or yourself! Just like real public schools. But no, the charter industry demands the freedom to use public money as they wish, behind closed doors. And they reward Assembly members to let them do it. After all, freedom from oversight is the civil rights issue of our time!

Charter schools in California take public money but evade any public responsibility. If you want to know how bad things are, read this.

The California Charter School Association reached into its deep pockets to block any oversight for the charter sector, which prefers to take public money without accountability or transparency. CCSA insists that charter schools should be allowed to do what they want, without open meetings or open records. The law would have prohibited conflicts of interest, and the CCSA wouldn’t stand for that.

The CCSA said they defeated the proposal by a “historic margin,” which was untrue. The vote was close. The numbers of yes, no, and abstain were nearly equal. Abstain counts as a no.

Here is the vote:

27 members of the Assembly voted for charter accountability; 26 members voted against charter accountability; 24 members abstained. And they have the chutzpah to call that a “historic margin”?

Those who voted for charter accountability: Ayes: Bonta, Calderon, Carrillo, Chau, Chiu, Chu, Frazier, Cristina Garcia, Gloria, Gonzalez Fletcher, Jones-Sawyer, Kalra, McCarty, Medina, Mullin, Nazarian, O’Donnell, Quirk, Quirk-Silva, Reyes, Rodriguez, Santiago, Mark Stone, Thurmond, Ting, Wood, Rendon

Those who opposed charter accountability: Noes: Acosta, Travis Allen, Baker, Bigelow, Brough, Chávez, Chen, Choi, Cunningham, Dahle, Flora, Fong, Gallagher, Harper, Kiley, Lackey, Levine, Maienschein, Mathis, Mayes, Melendez, Obernolte, Patterson, Steinorth, Voepel, Waldron

Abstentions: No Votes Recorded: Aguiar-Curry, Arambula, Berman, Bloom, Burke, Caballero, Cervantes, Cooley, Cooper, Daly, Eggman, Friedman, Eduardo Garcia, Gipson, Gray, Grayson, Holden, Irwin, Limón, Low, Muratsuchi, Rubio, Salas, Weber

If you live in California, and your legislator voted no or abstained, call your legislator and ask why he or she refused to hold charter schools accountable for use of public funds. Ask how much money the CCSA gave them. Start a campaign to buy back their vote for public schools.

One thing this vote makes crystal clear: Charter Schools in California are not public schools. Charter schools fight accountability, even the most minimal kind. They fight transparency. They don’t hold open meetings. They want the right to engage in financial conflicts of interest.

They don’t root out out fraud. They hide it and protect it.

Charter schools are private schools that make up their own rules. They are not public schools. Public schools have open meetings and open records. Public schools are not allowed to engage in self-dealing and conflicts of interest.

Public schools answer to the public, not campaign contributors.

Categories Accountability, California, Education Industry, Fraud, Privatization

BREAKING NEWS: Koch Brothers Declare War on Public Education

By dianeravitch
January 30, 2018 //
39

The Koch brothers have decided to target K-12 public schools.

The multi-billionaire Koch Brothers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to purchase control of departments in America’s colleges and universities, to spread their libertarian gospel of greed and undercut any commitment to the common good. At their recently concluded meeting of like-minded donors, the Koch’s announced that they are expanding their ideological campaign to include the destruction of the K-12 public schools in America. Choosing a school will be like choosing a pair of shoes in their vision, which is shared by Betsy DeVos,a member of their donors’ Network.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2018/01/30/daily-202-koch-network-laying-groundwork-to-fundamentally-transform-america-s-education-system/5a6feb8530fb041c3c7d74db/?utm_term=.e7ddbc619216

Arizona is ground zero for the Koch Brothers this spring. Steve Perry, the African American entrepreneur from Connecticut appeared at the meeting to urge the privatization on. The Washington Post was lowed to send a reporter on condition that the donors’ names were kept secret.

“Making a long-term play, the billionaire industrialist Charles Koch and his like-minded friends on the right are increasingly focused on melding the minds of the next generation by making massive, targeted investments in both K-12 and higher education.

“Changing the education system as we know it was a central focus of a three-day donor seminar that wrapped up late last night at a resort here in the desert outside Palm Springs.

“We’ve made more progress in the last five years than I had in the last 50,” Koch told donors during a cocktail reception. “The capabilities we have now can take us to a whole new level. … We want to increase the effectiveness of the network … by an order of magnitude. If we do that, we can change the trajectory of the country.”

“Leaders of the network dreamed of disrupting the status quo, customizing learning and breaking the teacher unions. One initial priority is expanding educational saving accounts and developing technologies that would let parents pick and choose private classes or tutors for their kids the same way people shop on Amazon. They envision making it easy for families to join together to start their own “micro-schools” as a new alternative to the public system.

“The Charles Koch Institute distributed roughly $100 million to 350 colleges and universities last year, up sevenfold over the past five years. What’s newer is the emphasis on elementary and secondary education. The network declined to offer exact figures but said it will double investment in K-12 this year, with much more planned down the road.

“There are about 700 people who each contribute a minimum of $100,000 per year to the constellation of organizations that comprise the Koch network. For years, many of these megadonors have urged Koch to wade into the battles over what they call school choice. Charles resisted, believing that his network had no special comparative advantage to move the needle in this area.

“Then he commissioned Meredith Olson, a vice president at Koch Industries, to interview members of his network about what they are doing in their home states to explore whether there is a way to scale their education efforts nationally. She developed a three-prong strategy: “reform, supplement, innovate.”

“The lowest hanging fruit for policy change in the United States today is K-12,” said Stacy Hock, a major Koch donor who has co-founded a group called Texans for Educational Opportunity. “I think this is the area that is most glaringly obvious.”

“In 2018, Koch donors see Arizona as ground zero in their push. Doug Ducey, the former chief executive of Cold Stone Creamery, became a member of the Koch network in 2011. Since 2015, he’s attended the seminars as governor of Arizona. Last year, he signed legislation to dramatically expand the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts program so that students can use taxpayer dollars that would be spent on them in public schools to cover private-school tuition or other educational expenses.

“Teacher unions, worried that this will undermine the public system, collected enough signatures to put the law on hold and create a ballot proposition to let voters decide in November whether to expand vouchers. [Note: Signatures for the referendum were collected by parents and SOS Arizona, not teachers unions.]

“Addressing the seminar yesterday, Ducey touted the measure as further reaching than anything that’s been tried in other states. He warned that, under Arizona law, if advocates lose at the ballot box, they will not be able to legislate on the topic in the future. “This is a very real fight in my state,” Ducey said. “I didn’t run for governor to play small ball. I think this is an important idea.”

“The Koch network is likely to spend heavily to support the voucher law, setting up a battle royal with the labor movement.

“Ducey introduced Steve Perry, the headmaster of Capital Prep Charter Schools, who has been traveling Arizona to speak in support of the law. “The teacher unions are unencumbered by the truth,” he told the Koch donors. “It is a distant relative that is never invited to dinner.”

“Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity, highlighted field operations that the network has built in 36 states to advance its agenda, including on education. “We have more grass-roots members in Wisconsin than the Wisconsin teachers’ union has members,” he said. “That’s how you change a state!””

 

 

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Billionaires, Education Industry, Education Reform, Evil, Koch Brothers, Privatization
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