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Georgia: 50CAN Targets Atlanta’s Public Schools for Privatization

By dianeravitch
April 19, 2024 //
16

Ed Johnson is a systems thinker and consultant in Atlanta. He cares passionately about the public schools of his city and keeps watch over the actions of the Atlanta Public School Board. Johnson is an adherent of the work of W. Edwards Deming; he believes in thinking of about how to change systems, not in quick fixes or the panacea of the day. In this letter to the Atlanta Public School Board, he takes them to task for their commitment to 50CAN, a school privatization group that was started in Connecticut as ConnCAN and funded largely by the Sackler family.

Ed Johnson writes:

“Join GeorgiaCAN for an informative session on the vision of Atlanta Public Schools!  Gain insights from APS Board member [Dr.] Ken Zeff as he shares his perspective and engages in a parent discussion regarding APS’s vision.  Let’s unite as a community to ensure that our children and the APS community have the resources and support necessary to pave the way for a brighter future.”

—GeorgiaCAN

 We now know GeorgiaCAN is a state-level affiliate of 50CAN, do we not?

 We now know 50CAN stands for 50-State Campaign for Achievement Now, do we not?

 We now know GeorgiaCAN, as a 50CAN affiliate, pushes destroying public education and public schools with school choice, charter schools, and vouchers, do we not?

 We now know, in December 2019, we had AJC parroting and giving prominent voice to GeorgiaCAN spouting free market school choice ideology, do we not?

 We now know, in August 2023, we had Atlanta school board members Katie Howard, District 1, and Erika Mitchell, District 5 and current school board chair, involved with GeorgiaCAN, do we not?

 And we now know, in September 2023, we had The King Center giving the 50CAN CEO a platform for some inscrutable reason, do we not?

 So, let’s consider Ken Zeff in the way The King Center was considered last September:

 50CAN evolved from ConnCAN (Connecticut CAN).  ConnCAN was funded pretty much wholly by Sackler Family fortunes earned as ill-gotten profits from over-prescribed sales of Oxycontin by the family’s Purdue Pharma.  Because of such greed for profits, hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. and worldwide have died, and continue to die, from opioid addiction.

 As with similar other organizations and their local operatives—for example, The City Fund and its local operatives, Ed Chang leading reformED Atlanta—it is fairly well-known that 50CAN and its state-level operatives aim to dismantle hence destroy public education as the common good that is foundational to sustaining democracy, so as to transform destroyed public schools into privatized and commodified schools composing competitive education marketplaces.  Think Milton Friedman and the “invisible hand of the market.”

 It is also fairly well-known that 50CAN, like similar other organizations, has advanced its aim to destroy public education by expressly targeting and catalyzing Black communities to demand school choice and charter schools that will magically deliver “achievement now.”

 In effect, 50CAN and such others “politrick” Black communities into facilitating their own destruction and that of their own children.  Again, while “It takes a village to raise a child,” it also takes a village to destroy a child.

 The usual assumption is that charter schools transformed from destroyed public schools are inherently better than “failing public schools.”  This is a lie, plain and simple.  It is impossible for charter schools to be inherently better or worse than “failing public schools.”  Because entropy is a fact of life, our public schools need improvement, have always needed improvement, and always will need improvement.  Reality offers charter schools no grace from the entropy fact of life.

 To assert that charter schools are inherently better than “failing public schools” is like asserting members of a certain group of human beings are inherently superior to members of other groups of human beings, based solely on expressions of variation in some few arbitrarily-chosen human physical features said to signify “race,” which is another lie.

 Charter schools do, however, appeal to certain retributive justice, behaviorally emulative, and selfish consumerist mindsets for which improvement-thinking has always been meaningless, at worst, and theoretical, at best.  50CAN knows this, and so uses it to catalyze Black communities to demand “achievement now.”  “Instant pudding,” the late, great systems thinker W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993) might say.

 Consequently, “Our children can’t wait!” has been a decades-long handy refrain that has always begged easy, quick, learningless change but never improvement with knowledge, which requires learning and unlearning.

 Unfortunately, systems thinking teaches through a nonviolence lens that the more often easy, quick, learningless change happens, the less improvement becomes possible; then, the less improvement becomes possible, the less sustainable democracy becomes; then, the less sustainable democracy becomes, the more societal dysfunctions develop and emerge, after a time, in Black communities and elsewhere; then, the more societal dysfunctions show up, the more the refrain, “Our children can’t wait!”

 It is all a destructively vicious, self-reinforcing feedback loop that 50CAN and similar other destroyers of public education are happy to catalyze in Black communities, in particular, and to support its playing out, if only continually, but continuously, ideally.

 With systems thinking, it really is not hard to understand why some out-of-control-for-the-worse aspects of violent crime in City of Atlanta involving ever more “Black” teenaged children and younger other persons in Black communities has become such a challenge.

 Currently, Atlanta’s culture predictably produces a homicide every 2.3 +/- 4.0 days, while predictably producing an aggravated assault every 3.7 +/- 10.7 hours.

 These are realities Atlanta Police Department data reveal when viewed through a Deming kind of systems thinking lens instead of through a financial accounting-style lens that invariably creates an incomplete or false narrative that the media and others then report as fact.

 Although some are quite capable to look below the performative surface, or show stage, of the proverbial iceberg and down into its greater depths to see and know Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was also a profound systems thinker, systems thinking seems generally absent in Black culture; certainly, children labeled “Black” seem never to learn about this deeper and critically important aspect of Dr. King.

 All too often the children learn to conserve racism and so-called white supremacy rather than learn to help humanity relieve itself of these scourges.  The children learn and internalize racial categorization, the false narrative at the heart of racial violence.  It seems the children never learn to internalize an understanding of human variation, the truth at the heart of nonracial nonviolence.

 It is quite puzzling that some fight and rail against racism, all the while conserving it and the “race” lie racism needs in order to exist, in truth.

 Therefore, a question for The King Center must be, why is The King Center giving a platform to 50CAN?

 50CAN and GeorgiaCAN, private organizations known to be about making “Beloved Community” a virtual impossibility, in all respects.

 Given this, we now know Dr. Ken Zeff lied when he swore, in taking the Oath of Office the Charter of the Atlanta Independent School System requires, “I will be governed by the public good and the interests of said school system,” do we not?

 Being involved with GeorgiaCAN necessarily and unavoidably means Dr. Ken Zeff exercises, well, the “choice” to be governed by a private goodand the interests of GeorgiaCAN, hence 50CAN.

 In a discussion during this month’s regularly scheduled school board meeting, Dr. Ken Zeff voluntarily professed quite enthusiastically to being a school choice proponent.

 Well, he was at least honest about it—something we might appreciate, when some other Atlanta Board of Education members have shown they are not so honest about their being in the school choice camp.

 

Ed Johnson

Advocate for Quality in Public Education

Atlanta GA | (404) 505-8176 | edwjohnson@aol.com

Categories Atlanta, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Fake, Georgia, Privatization

North Carolina Pays for Vouchers for the Rich

By dianeravitch
April 18, 2024 //
2

Public Schools First in North Carolina finds it strange that the legislature can’t find the money to raise teachers’ salaries but easily finds money to fund vouchers for the rich.

Its latest notice says:

This week House majority leader Tim Moore announced that a legislative short session priority would be to increase funding for vouchers for the coming year by around $300 million to ensure that the state could fund vouchers for all families who applied. More than half of the applications came from families with incomes too high to have been eligible last year. Our March 9 newsletterdescribed the applicant pool breakdown and pointed out that increased demand this year was likely due to the state spending $1,000,000 to market the program and droves of existing high-income private school families seeking a taxpayer-funded discount coupon for their tuition bill.

From 2018-19 through 2022-23, the percentage of new applicants who actually accepted vouchers ranged from 44% to 51%. If historical patterns hold, the current voucher budget would more than pay for Tier 1 and Tier 2 families, cover the cost for returning voucher recipients (typically 80%) and be left with $50 million extra. In other words, more voucher funding is only needed to pay for vouchers for the upper-income families.

To put Moore’s priorities in sharp relief, his announcement came one week after the State Board of Education heard from DPI staff that last year’s teacher attrition rate was higher than it had been in decades. It hit 11.5%, which represents a whopping increase of 42% over last year’s attrition numbers.

The attrition rates were driven by especially high attrition for teachers with fewer than five or more than 26 years of experience. The highest rate, 26%, was the same for first-year teachers and veteran teachers with 35+ years of experience.

When asked about teacher salaries, Moore did say he thinks there may be room in the budget for teacher raises, and that the short session would address the looming crisis in early childhood care funding.

But North Carolina has some serious catching up to do when it comes to bringing teacher salaries to a level where they will attract and retain teachers. North Carolina lags behind all surrounding states in state-funded salaries. Our beginning teachers start out lower and our veteran teachers remain at the bottom. (See our fact sheetfor links to salary schedules.)

In 2023-24, North Carolina’s state minimum beginning teacher salary was $39,000. While it is scheduled to increase to $41,000 in 2024-25, it will still lag behind the beginning salary in neighboring states. And young people looking at teaching as a possible profession will be put off by the relatively poor earnings trajectory.

Strong support for bolstering salaries also came from North Carolina’s Fiscal Research Division’s recent analysis of state-funded salaries that found only deputy clerks of court had lower starting salaries than teachers. After the 7th year, deputy clerks made more. Only state highway patrol officers had lower maximum salaries than teachers. 

Many local communities are working to make up for state neglect by offering teacher salary supplements, but this remedy simply exacerbates existing inequities. In 2023-24 teacher salary supplements ranged from $10,650 in Chapel Hill/Carrboro School District to $0 in Caswell County, Graham County, and Weldon City Schools.

Teacher salary increases barely scratch the surface of what the NCGA could do to improve conditions for public school educators, students, families, and communities. Funding for instructional assistants, school psychologists, counselors, nurses, and social workers is desperately needed. The looming child care crisiswill require fast action to prevent child care centers across the state from closing.

According to Moore, North Carolina has ample funds in reserve to pay the private school tuition vouchers for wealthy families. Perhaps those tax dollars should be redirected toward programs that serve the taxpaying public at large. 

Categories Cruelty, Education Industry, North Carolina, Teacher Pay, Vouchers

South Carolina: Charter Fraud and Profits!

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2024 //
3

Carol Burris writes here about a charter scandal in South Carolina. Carol is the executive director of the Network for Public Education.

She writes:

Last week, an excellent investigative report on a for-profit-run charter chain appeared in South Carolina’s Post and Courier. Entitled How a Florida principal with a controversial history became a SC charter school kingpin, it was written by Hillary Flynn and Maura Turcotte. These reporters put extraordinary care and diligent research into the piece.  I know because, over the course of a year, Flynn would call me from time to time for insight into the for-profit charter world. There is no transparency in South Carolina. You need FOIAs to determine which schools in the state are even run by for-profits. Here is a summary of what they found. 

 

Pinnacle, a Florida for-profit corporation, has three charter schools in South Carolina. 

Its creator and owner, Michael D’Angelo, is a former Florida charter school principal who was fired from a for-profit chain. He then moved to another charter, where he wrote himself reimbursement checks with no invoices and got fired again.

 

Undeterred by his previous failures, D’Angelo tried to open several charter schools in Florida. Despite being told he did “not have the competency to operate a charter school,” he found an accountant, created a for-profit charter management company, and headed to South Carolina to open Gray Collegiate Academy.

 

When Pinnacle’s school got into trouble with the South Carolina Public Charter School District for noncompliance, Pinnacle went shopping for a new authorizer for its charter school. A Christian college, Erskine College, stepped in. It later accused Pinnacle of fraud. Then, two Pinnacle Schools moved to another Christian College, Limestone College, for authorization. Authorizers receive substantial fees from the schools, a bonanza for cash-strapped colleges. 

 

The process of authorizer shopping, a common practice in states like Ohio and Michigan with large for-profit sectors, is a glaring loophole in the system. The authorizer, who stands to gain substantial fees from the schools, can provide a new lease of life to a shady charter school. A South Carolina Senate bill aims to curb this practice, but it faces fierce opposition from the charter lobby. The National Alliance of Public Charter Schools even lobbied to ensure that states with multiple authorizers are privileged when getting big CSP grants, further exacerbating the issue of authorizer shopping.

 

Meanwhile, Pinnacle plans to open two more schools, serving as additional cash cows for D’Angelo and his friends.

 

You can read the excellent investigative reporting on Pinnacle here. While you must register with the paper to see it, it is not behind a paywall. Kudos to Flynn and Turcotte. 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Scandal, South Carolina

Nebraska: Pro-Voucher Legislators Try to Kill Referendum (Because They Know They Will Lose)

By dianeravitch
April 16, 2024 //
5

Nebraska voucher advocates are trying to head off a referendum because they know they will lose. Senator Lou Ann Linehan has introduced a bill intended to fund vouchers and block a referendum, thus preventing Nebraskans from voting on whether they want vouchers.

Senator Linehan is working with Betsy DeVos’s advocacy group American Federation for Children.

Of course, they don’t want to let the public decide! Vouchers will lose!

In every state referendum on school vouchers, they have always been defeated. The public wants public tax dollars to go to public schools! The public does not want to subsidize the tuition of students who attend private and religious schools. In every state that has vouchers, most are claimed by students who already attend non-public schools. Worse, as Michigan State’s Josh Cowen has demonstrated, students who leave public schools with vouchers fall far behind their public school peers.

And of course, vouchers drain funding from public schools, attended by the vast majority of children.

From: Brooke @ Stand For Schools<info@standforschools.org>
Date: Mon, Apr 15, 2024 at 5:05 PM
Subject: The Fight Continues: LB 1402

Dear Friend,

 LB 1402, Senator Linehan’s private school voucher bill, passed through general and select file debate last week. With that, LB 1402 could become the first bill in Nebraska’s legislative history to overturn a law with a referendum on the ballot for November, bypassing your right to vote. 

We urge you to please contact your Senatorand tell them NO to LB 1402 and to let Nebraskans vote on public funds to private schools in November!  

Contact Your Senator!

Instead of sending public dollars to private schools, which are under no obligation to serve all children, tell your Senator you support the public schools that 9 out of 10 Nebraska students attend, and so should they.

Contact your Senatorand tell them NO LB 1402 and that you support public education!

Contact Your Senator

Thank you for your continued support of Stand For Schools and Nebraska public education! 

 The Stand For Schools Team  

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Categories Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Fraud, Nebraska, Vouchers

New Hampshire: GOP Leadership is Determined to Crush Public Schools, Ignore Hungry Children

By dianeravitch
April 16, 2024 //
3

New Hampshire reporter Garry Rayno says that the state legislature has its priorities upside down. Writing at IndepthNH.org, Rayno describes a Republican state government led by “moderate” Governor Chris Sununu that’s determined to destroy public schools while expanding vouchers eventually to cover all students’ private school tuition, including the children of the richest residents. Sununu appointed a homeschooling parent, Frank Edelblut, as the State Commissioner of Education. Edelblut is hostile to public schools and eager to divert funding from them.

The Republican legislature refused to renew a program to feed hungry children. As Rayno notes, they are “pro-life,” but don’t care much about living children.

Rayno writes:

From the new proposed rules for education minimum standards to alternative education opportunities, the state legislature and the executive branch appear to have their priorities upside down.

Call it culture wars, call it the war on public education or whatever you want, but much more attention is being paid to about 3 or 4 percent of the state’s school-age students — mostly in private and religious schools or home-schooled — while about 24 percent of public school students with food insecurity do not receive the same attention.

While there is ample evidence a hungry student is not a student fully focused on his or her studies, and is less likely to succeed academically than those who aren’t hungry when they come to school, the House last week by the slimmest of margins, said the food insecure kids could go hungry in this, one of the wealthiest per-capita states in the country.

House Bill 1212 supporters were willing to trim the cost by reducing the income cap from 350 percent of the federal poverty level to 250 percent or about $17 million annually from the Education Trust Fund instead of $50 million.

But that failed to induce enough Republican support to take the bill off the table where a near party line vote had put it, effectively killing it for this year.

The Republican majority also did not want to spend $150,000 of federal pandemic money to hire a coordinator to help about 1,500 homeless students who do not qualify for state homeless services because they do not live with their parents.

Many of the 1,500 students are in the LGBTQIA+ community.

Many of the same people who did not want to spend state or federal money to feed the hungry and help the homeless children and youths favor greater restrictions on abortions or are “pro-life.”

What they are saying with their votes, is we want you to have babies whether you want them or not or whether you can afford them or not, but once they are born, you’re responsible for taking care of them with no help from us.

Pro-life may not be the best term for anti-abortion proponents who voted not to feed the hungry children nor help find them a place to live…

Yet this week two public hearings will be held on bills to expand the eligibility for the Education Freedom Account program now in its third year, and every year well over its budgeted appropriation.

The bill would increase the income cap for the program from 350 percent of the federal poverty level to 500 percent which is $156,000 for a family of four and $102,000 for a parent and child household based on federal 2024 figures.

The current rate would limit family income to $109,200 for a family of four and $71,540 for a family of two.

The cost of the program since its inception has steadily increased from $8.1 million the first year, to $15 million the second and $25 million for the current school year.

The bill barely passed the House and the House Finance Committee chair waived fiscal review of the increase although many more students would be eligible — well above 50 percent of the families in New Hampshire and greatly increasing the cost, but bill proponents did not want to give Democrats another shot at killing the bill.

The money for the program comes from the Education Trust Fund which also provides the adequacy grants to public schools and the larger grants to charter schools, along with special education, building aid and other educational activities…

The bill will increase the income threshold from 350 percent to 400 percent with the threshold for a family of two $81,760 and a family of four at $124,800.

Reaching Higher Education estimates this increase will bring the cost for next school year to $53.4 million.

That is about a quarter of the current surplus in the Education Trust Fund.

The ultimate goal for supporters of the EFA program is universal eligibility or having no income cap so every family in the state would be eligible which would cost $90 million to $100 million if all the students in private or religious schools and homeschool programs sought and received some grants.

About 10 states have universal or near universal voucher programs, but the two states that have attracted the most attention because of their impact on state budgets have been Arizona and Ohio and both have gone well over estimated costs as they have here in New Hampshire.

The program is bankrupting Arizona and the Democratic governor is trying to limit its reach, but the Republican-controlled legislature has refused to go along.

Ohio faces a lawsuit over its program claiming it is hurting public schools while the vast majority of the new participants are students already in private or religious schools or homeschooling programs.  

Sound familiar.

As one Texas state senator said when Gov. Greg Abbott was pushing for school vouchers, “it is nothing but a subsidy for the wealthy.”

And there are the new rules for the state’s minimum standards for public schools.

Two public hearings were held in the past two weeks and the proposed rules were universally trashed by almost everyone testifying causing state Board of Education chair Drew Cline to chastise those focusing on the rules presented to the board in February while a newer, updated version will come before the board soon, although that updated proposal is not available to the public.

The rules are aimed at clarifying and adding details to the state’s competency-based education model, but they also have been criticized for lowering the existing minimum standards, removing limits on class size, making many standards optional and not mandatory, and no longer requiring certified teachers and professionals.

Other concerns were the proposal would do away with local control, a hallmark for public education in the state, and move toward privatizing education and away from what one person called the great equalizer “public education.”

Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut proposed bills in the last few sessions that would have eliminated many current standards to focus only on the core areas of English, math and science, but without much success with the legislature.

Many saw the plan as a way to lower the state’s share of the cost of education and to make public school alternatives more attractive to students and parents.

Say what you will about Edelblut and his opinions about public education, he is tenacious.

The state is at a crossroads that will determine what public education will be for the next decade and on whether or not the state is willing to take care of its most vulnerable so they can fully participate in that education.

The end of the 2024 session and ultimately the next election should provide a vision of the future for New Hampshire and its children.

Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Childhood, Cruelty, Disruption, Education Industry, New Hampshire, Students, Vouchers

Jan Resseger: Can Chicago Reverse Two Decades of Corporate Reform?

By dianeravitch
April 15, 2024 //
29

Jan Resseger reports on dramatic changes in Chicago, which has been a Petri dish for corporate school reform for at least two decades. The last mayoral election pitted Paul Vallas, an Uber reformer against Brandon Johnson, a teacher and member of the Chicago Teachers Union. Johnson is now beginning to unravel the damage done by Arne Duncan, Rahm Emanuel, and the business leadership.

Resseger writes:

Right now we are watching in real time as Chicago tries to figure out how to undo the consequences of a catastrophic, two-decades long experiment in marketplace school reform.

Chicago’s Board of Education has voted to implement an important first step in Mayor Brandon Johnson’s proposed school district overhaul: the elimination of student based budgeting.

Mayor Johnson seeks to restore equal opportunity across a school district that has become marked by magnet schools, charter schools, elite and selective public schools, struggling neighborhood schools, and neighborhoods without a a public high school or even a traditional public elementary school.

Johnson has prioritized major changes in the Chicago Public Schools, whose problems became especially obvious in June of 2013, when Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed 50 neighborhood public schools because, as he claimed, they were under-enrolled. Eve Ewing, a University of Chicago sociologist explains that, “80 percent of the students who would be affected were African American… and 87 percent of the schools to be closed were majority black.” (Ghosts in the Schoolyard, p. 54)

Chicago was an early experimenter with school reform. Brandon Johnson, the city’s elected mayor, leads Chicago’s schools as part of the 1994 mayoral governance plan imposed on the public schools by Mayor Richard M. Daley and the Illinois legislature. The Chicago Public Schools adopted universal, districtwide school choice, and the launch in 2004 of Renaissance 2010 (led by Arne Duncan) that involved the authorization of a mass of new charter schools and the subsequent closure of so-called failing neighborhood public chools. Chicago adopted a strategy called “portfolio school reform,” described in a National Education Policy Center brief: “The operational theory behind portfolio districts is based on a stock market metaphor—the stock portfolio under the control of a portfolio manager. If a stock is low-performing, the manager sells it.  As a practical matter, this means either closing the school or turning it over to an charter school….”

Then in 2014, Mayor Emanuel added a districtwide funding plan called student based budgeting. In a 2019 report, Roosevelt University professor Stephanie Farmer explained: “Student Based Budgeting fundamentally remade the approach to funding public schools. Student Based Budgeting is akin to a business model of financing public schools because funds are based on student-consumer demand and travel with the student-consumer to the school of their choice.  (The plan contrasts with)… the old public good approach to financing public schools that ensured a baseline of education professionals in each school.”

Because it is known that aggregate school test scores correlate primarily with poverty and wealth, it was predicable that student based budgeting would put schools in Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods on a race to the bottom, leading to schools with tragically limited programming for the city’s most vulnerable students and more school closures.  Farmer concludes: “Our findings show that Chicago Public Schools’ putatively color-blind Student Based Budgeting reproduces racial inequality by concentrating low budget public schools almost exclusively in Chicago’s Black neighborhoods. The clustering of low budget schools in low-income Black neighborhoods adds another layer of hardship in neighborhoods experiencing distress from depopulation, low incomes, and unaffordable housing.”

In late March of this year, WBEZ’s Sarah Karp reported that the Board of Education voted to launch a new plan to determine how much each school has to spend on teachers and programming: “Chicago Public Schools is officially moving away from a school funding formula that pitted schools against each other as they competed for students… District officials… announced (on March 21, 2024) they are implementing a formula that targets resources for individual schools based on the needs of students, such as socioeconomic status and health. They will abandon student based budgeting—a formula unveiled a decade ago under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel that provided a foundational amount of money based on how many students were enrolled…. Under the needs-based formula, every school will get at least four foundation positions, including an assistant principal, plus core and ‘holistic teachers.’… Schools will then get additional funding based on the opportunity index, which looks at barriers to opportunity including race, socioeconomic status, education, health and community factors.”

While undoing a market-based scheme for school funding and operations is clearly a moral imperative, the challenges appear daunting.  Karp continues: “This change was expected as Mayor Brandon Johnson and others have sharply criticized student based budgeting. However, it was unclear how it would play out, especially as the district faces a $391 million deficit for the next school year.  The shortfall is the result of federal COVID relief funds running out… District officials offered no information at a Board of Education meeting… on how the district will fill the budget hole.”

In addition to the threat of a serious financial shortfall, another challenge is the outcry from parents who have over the past two decades become a constituency for charter schools, magnet schools and selective high schools.  Mayor Johnson has tried to reassure parents: “(L)et me assure people that—whether its a selective enrollment school or magnet school—we will continue to invest in those goals… (A)ll I’m simply saying is that where education is working in particular at our selective enrollment schools and our magnet schools, my position is like any other parents in Chicago: that type of programming should work in all of our schools. And that has not been the case. Neighborhood schools have been attacked, they have been demonized, and they’ve been disinvested in, and Black and brown parents overwhelmingly send their children to those schools. So it’s not just demonizing and disinvesting in Black and brown schools, it’s demonizing and disinvesting in Black and brown people—and not under my administration.”

Although school choice plans like Chicago’s were originally premised on the idea of providing more choices for those who have few, in her profound book, Ghosts in the Schoolyard, Eve Ewing explains that families in Chicago do not have equal access in today’s school system based on school choice: “While choosing the best option from a menu of possibilities is appealing in theory, researchers have documented that in practice the ‘choice’ model often leaves black families at a disadvantage. Black parents’ ability to truly choose may be hindered by limited access to transportation, information, and time, leaving them on the losing end of a supposedly fair marketplace.” (Ghosts in the Schoolyard, p. 23) Families dealing with poverty and its challenges are more likely to select a neighborhood school within walking distance of their home.

Mayor Johnson and his school board are facing a fraught political battle in the midst of severe budget challenges. Chicago school reform has exacerbated inequality. The families whose children remain in traditional neighborhood schools that have been undermined by school choice and student based budgeting have watched their their schools lose staff and programs their children need. At the same time, families who have benefited from charter schools, magnet schools and selective-enrollment high schools have now become strong supporters of the programs they have come to take for granted.

Mayor Johnson has been very clear, however, about what the past two decades of portfolio school reform, school choice and student based budgeting have meant for Chicago: “What has happened in the city of Chicago is selective enrollment schools go after students who perform academically on paper.  It’s a very narrow view of education. Let’s also ensure that other areas of need are also highlighted and lifted up.  That’s arts, our humanities, technology, trades…  It’s not like we’re asking for anything radical. We’re talking about social workers, counselors, class sizes that are manageable. We’re talking about full wraparound services for treatment for families who are experiencing the degree of trauma that exists in this city.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Elections, Emanuel, Rahm, Ethics, Extremism, Hoax, Privatization, School Choice, Students, Supporting public schools

Peter Greene: A Voucher By Any Other Name Is Still a Voucher and a Hoax

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2024 //
11

Peter Greene writes here about two basic facts: 1) vouchers are unpopular; and 2) because they are unpopular, their supporters call them something else, not vouchers. There have been more than 20 state referenda on vouchers. None passed. So voucher advocates had to become creative and come up with new names for them.

In Florida, the state constitution forbids spending public money on religious schools. So Jeb Bush, a fervent voucher guy, became creative. He proposed a referendum to remove that wording from the state constitution in 2012. The referendum was titled “The Religious Freedom Amendment.” Opponents of vouchers cried foul, but the misleading title remained. Others had to vote against “religious freedom” to oppose vouchers. Some were undoubtedly fooled, but the Religious Freedom Amendment was defeated anyway; only 44% supported it. Nonetheless, the Florida legislature enacted vouchers, ignoring the referendum failure, and in the past year, removed all income limits. As in every other state with universal vouchers, the majority of students applying for vouchers were already enrolled in private and religious schools.

Peter Greene writes:

Voucher supporters have one major problem: school vouchers are unpopular.

The term doesn’t test well. Measure of public support is iffy– if you ask people if they would like every student to have the chance to ride to a great school on their own pony, people say yes, but if you ask a more reality-based framing (“should we spend education dollars on public schools or subsidies for some private schools”) the results look a bit different. 

But one clear measure of public support for vouchers is this; despite all the insistence that the public just loves the idea, no voucher measure has ever been passed by the voters in a state. All voucher laws have been passed by legislators, not voted in by the public. 

Voucher supporters have developed one clear strategy– call them something else.

The basic school voucher idea is simple– the state takes money that it was going to spend on public education (either after that money has been paid in taxes, or by having someone trade a “contribution” to a voucher fund in exchange for tax credit) and giving it to parents, who in turn can go out and buy education services on their own. 

They’re not taxpayer-funded vouchers–they’re “tax credit scholarships.” They’re not vouchers– they’re an Education Freedom Account. And if you want to get in a twitter battle, go ahead and call education savings accounts “vouchers,” because part of the whole point of education savings account was to create an instrument that was both a super-voucher and not-something-we’ll-call-a-voucher-at-all-so-stop-doing-that-dammit.

I expect that behind the curtain there have been folks fervently doing messaging testing on other names for vouchers, and from the results around the nation, we can deduce that words that tested well were “education” and “freedom” and “scholarship.” Also, “empowerment” is coming on strong. States with education savings accounts have the chance to play with the initials ESA. 

So what pops out of the branding machine is Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (Arizona), Education Freedom Account (Arkansas, New Hampshire), Family Empowerment Scholarship Program (Florida), Choice Scholarship Program(Indiana), Opportunity Scholarship Program (North Carolina), Education Choice Scholarship (Ohio), and, of course, who could forget Betsy DeVos’s national tax credit scholarship voucher program, the Education Freedom Plan. 

You can mad lib your way to a voucher program of your own. Education Freedom Scholarship Opportunity Program! Family Freedom Education Scholarships! Family Freedom Empowerment Education Scholarship Opportunity Choice Program Plan! Just don’t call it a voucher.

Bonus credits to Louisianna, where someone took the trouble to write a bill pushing the Louisiana Giving All True Opportunity to Rise– LA GATOR. And in California, legislature voucherfiles are trying “Education Flex Account” for their latest attempt to pass an ESA voucher.

But a voucher by any other name still smells the same. It’s a payoff to parents so that they’ll exit public education, a false promise of education choice, a redirection of public taxpayer dollars into private pockets, an outsourcing of discrimination, a public subsidy for private religious choices, a means of defunding and dismantling public education as we understand it in this country, a transformation of a public good into a market-based commodity. Call it what you like. There isn’t enough air freshener in the world to make it smell like a rose.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Education Industry, Ethics, Fake, Florida, Hoax, Vouchers

Michigan: State Board Passes Resolution to Put Charter Schools Under Same Rules as Public Schools

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2024 //
16

Michigan, under Republican control for years, has given free rein to charter schools and has long been overrun with unaccountable for-profit schools. But the Governor, Gretchen Whitney, is now a Democrat, and the elected State Board of Education is no longer controlled by Republicans. The State Board took a shocking step this week. It resolved that charter schools should be held to the same rules as public schools.

The State Board of Education approved a resolution during its meeting today calling for legislation to open charter schools to be treated more like public schools in the state of Michigan.

Mitchell ROBINSON’s resolution made the agenda and asked the state Legislature to create and pass laws that would put charter schools under the approval of the Michigan Department of Education and make them more transparent by opening them up to the Freedom of Information Act and Open Meetings Act.

The resolution also asked for legislation that would require charter schools to follow many of the same requirements as public schools, such as bidding for vendors, requirements that no child be excluded from enrolling, not refusing transfer students if space is open, require teachers and administrators to hold certificates, and mandate contracts for management organizations be published online.

“So charter schools are technically public schools, so they should be expected to follow regulations regarding transparency, as all publicly funded schools are,” Robinson said.

However, he said many charter schools are dominated by politically-motivated special interest groups, those looking to be education reformers, and “predatory for-profit organizations.”

He said he’s looked at the charter school system in Michigan and found that they make up one-third of all the local education agencies in the state and are not accountable to the communities.

“I see no evidence of innovation in this service sector,” he said.

He said the public school system struggles to adequately fund itself, not even adding the charter system that also pulls funding for the 363 schools across 285 districts.

“This is financially irresponsible,” he said.

The sole no vote against the resolution came from Tom McMILLIN, a Republican board member. 

He argued that charter schools fill in gaps in education and were already fully transparent with the public funding they received. 

“These charter schools give parents choices. They fill up for a reason,” McMillin said.

He said the teachers and administrators were already required to be certified.

“What this would do is simply force charter schools to not open, which is what some people want,” McMillin said.

Marshall BULLOCK II pointed to troubles with charter schools in the Detroit area closing without warning or opening in a struggling district that could have the “unintended consequence” of splitting a neighborhood.

“That is how you destroy a neighborhood,” Bullock said.

McMillin called it “perverse” to not give parents a choice and “force them, based on their zip code, to a failing school.” He placed the problem at the feet of the state superintendent.

Tiffany TILLEY asked that the board hear a presentation to look at what other states are doing in terms of charter schools.

“Michigan has become kind of like the Wild Wild West when it comes to charter schools,” Tilley said.

She said you can’t have “thousands” of charter schools with no transparency and continue to maintain a well-funded system, but putting a limit on the number of charters schools could help.

“We do need to change the laws and this has gone on for a very long time,” she said.

Now if only the Michigan legislature would ban for-profit charters! No public school operates for profit. The “profit” is inevitably taken from students and teachers. It’s wrong.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Michigan

Bob Shepherd: A Review of a Review of “Slaying Goliath”

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2024 //
16

Forgive me for posting two reviews of my last book, which was published on January 20, 2020.

As I explained in the previous post, I did not see either of these reviews until long after they appeared in print. Slaying Goliath appeared just as COVID was beginning to make its mark, only a few weeks before it was recognized as a global pandemic. In writing the book, I wanted to celebrate the individuals and groups that demonstrated bravery in standing up to the powerful, richly endowed forces that were determined to privatize their public schools through charters or vouchers.

America’s public schools had educated generations of young people who created the most powerful, most culturally creative, most dynamic nation on earth. Yet there arose a cabal of billionaires and their functionaries who were determined to destroy public schools and turn them into privately-managed schools and to turn their funding over to private and religious schools.

Having worked for many years inside the conservative movement, I knew what was happening. I saw where the money was coming from, and I knew that politicians had been won over (bought) by campaign contributions.

Publishing a book at the same time as a global pandemic terrifies the world and endangers millions of people is bad timing, for sure.

But the most hurtful blow to me and the book was a mean-spirited review in The New York Times Book Review. The NYTBR is unquestionably the most important review that a book is likely to get. Its readership is huge. A bad review is a death knell. That’s the review I got. The reviewer, not an educator or education journalist, hated the book. Hated it. I found her review hard to read because she seemed to reviewing a different book.

I was completely unaware that Bob Shepherd reviewed the review. I didn’t see it until two or three years after it appeared. He wrote what I felt, but I, as the author, knew that it was very bad form to complain, and I did not.

So I happily post Bob Shepherd’s review of the review here.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Common Core, Corporate Reform, Corruption, Curriculum, Dark Money, Democracy, DFER, Disruption, Education Industry, Failure, History, Hoax, Lies, Network for Public Education, Parent Groups, Privatization, Propaganda, Race to the Top, Racism, Religion, Segregation, Unions, Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

David C. Berliner and Gene V. Glass Review “Slaying Goliath”

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2024 //
15

I am almost four years late in discovering this review by two scholars for whom I have the greatest respect: David C. Berliner and Gene V. Glass.

I was happy to read this review because Slaying Goliath had a checkered fate. It was published in mid-January 2020. I went on a book tour, starting in Seattle. By mid-February, I made my last stop in West Virginia, where I met with teachers and celebrated the two-year anniversary of their strike, which shut down every school in the state.

As I traveled, news emerged of a dangerous “flu” that was rapidly spreading. It was COVID; by mid-March, the country was shutting down. No one wanted to read about the fight to save public schools or about its heroes. The news shifted, as it should have, to the panicked response to COVID, to the deaths of good people, to the overwhelmed hospitals and their overworked staff.

To make matters worse, the New York Times Book Review published a very negative review by someone who admired the “education reform” movement that I criticized. I thought of writing a letter to the editor but quickly dropped the idea. I wrote and rewrote my response to the review in my head, but not on paper.

Then, again by happenstance, I discovered that Bob Shepherd had reviewed the review of my book in The New York Times. He said everything that I wish I could have said but didn’t. His review was balm for my soul. Shepherd lacerated the tone and substance of the review, calling it an “uniformed, vituperative, shallow, amateurish ‘review.’” Which it was. His review of the review was so powerful that I will post it next.

Then, a few weeks ago, I found this review by Berliner and Glass.

The review begins:

Reviewed by Gene V Glass and David C. Berliner Arizona State University, United States

They wrote:

In a Post-Truth era, one must consider the source. 

In this case, the source is Diane Rose Silvers, the third of eight children of Walter Silverstein, a high school drop-out, and Ann Katz, a high school graduate. The Silvers were a middle-class Houston family, proprietors of a liquor store, and loyal supporters of FDR.

After graduation from San Jacinto High School, she enrolled in Wellesley College in September, 1956. Working as a “copy boy”for the Washington Post, Diane met Richard Ravitch, a lawyer working in the federal government and son of a prominent New York City family. They married on June 26,1960, in Houston, two weeks after Diane’s graduation from Wellesley. The couple settled in New York City, where Richard took employment in the family construction business. He eventually served as head of the Metropolitan Transit Authority and Lieutenant Governor in the 2000s, having been appointed by Democratic Governor David Paterson.

 Diane bore three sons, two of whom survived to adulthood. Diane and Richard ended their 26-year marriage in 1986. She had not been idle. For a period starting in 1961, Diane was employed by The New Leader, a liberal, anti-communist journal. She later earned a PhD in history of education from Columbia in 1975 under the mentorship of Lawrence Cremin.

Diane was appointed to the office of Assistant Secretary of Education, in the Department of Education by George H. W. Bush and later by Bill Clinton. In 1997, Clinton appointed her to the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB), on which she served until 2004. 

Ravitch worked “… for many years in some of the nation’s leading conservative think tanks.

Read the full pdf here.

ravitch-reviewDownload
Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reform, Curriculum, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Failure, Funding, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, History, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Parents, Privatization, Ravitch, Diane, Resistance, School Choice, Standardized Testing, Students, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers, Walton Foundation
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