Archives for category: Education Industry
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South Carolina: New Charters Built with EB-5 Visa Boondoggles

By dianeravitch
May 24, 2017 //
11

You may recall reading a story recently about Jared Kushner’s sister soliciting investments in Kushner real estate deals at a meeting in Beijing, where she promised that investors of at least $500,000 would get a green card in exchange. Investing in charter school construction is another way in which the EB-5 visas are up for grabs.

This story from South Carolina demonstrates how foreign investors are buying green cards by investing in charter school construction, and the middlemen are raking in money at exorbitant interest rates.

A handful of S.C. charter schools — finally in new school buildings — are poised to pay out millions in taxpayer dollars to middlemen, developers and foreign investors who want green cards.

The money, paid in the form of high-interest rent payments on the new school facilities, has some critics saying that the state’s taxpayers are getting duped. Money they believe is paying for S.C. students’ education is instead going to this relatively new network of out-of-state players who are charging high interest rates, as well as wealthy Chinese nationals searching for a quicker path into to the country.

And it’s all happening with federal government approval.

“They were taken for a terrific ride and are paying this high interest rate. It’s remarkable,” said David North, a fellow with the conservative Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., “They could end up paying more in interest than the (cost to construct the school).”

Figuring out just who is getting paid what is complicated and is not readily available in one place. Take, for example, Lowcountry Montessori School in Port Royal, a charter school that serves about 400 students in preschool through the 11th grade.

Through a controversial federal program called EB-5, the school received $1.5 million from three foreign investors to build its school building that opened last school year on Broad River Drive.

Critics have long charged that the program allows rich immigrants to buy their way into the country. And in recent years, cases of fraud and concerns about national security have also plagued the program.

The Port Royal school’s financial arrangement was put together by American Charter Development, a Utah-based company, that secured another $4 million for the new building and constructed the school.

The school is now leasing its $5.5 million building from ACD at a whopping 9 percent annual rate of the school’s construction costs. If the school were to make only the minimum payments over the course of the 20-year lease, $5.6 million of its $10.3 million in lease payments would be interest, according to the school’s most recent audit.

Worked into those lease payments is another key player — Utah-based Education Fund of America, a for-profit company which is receiving a 7.3 percent annual fee on the $1.5 million it secured in EB-5 funding for the school.

And then there are the three unnamed foreign entrepreneurs who actually invested the $1.5 million. The school will pay them back as well, likely including a small return on their investment of around 1 percent, say those familiar with the EB-5 program. The repayment is also included in the lease arrangement.

By comparison, the Beaufort County School District is paying just 1.6 percent interest on its construction bonds for its new May River High School that opened last year.

Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/news/state/south-carolina/article151566537.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Funding, Privatization

Ohio: Major Newspaper Calls for Charter School Accountability and Transparency

By dianeravitch
May 23, 2017 //
8

One of the most heartening developments in recent years is the awakening of major newspapers in Ohio to the massive scandals surrounding their state’s charter industry. These scandals have come about because of the money nexus that connects charter operators and politicians. Charters in Ohio have a dismal academic record, and also a dismal financial record. This happens because the laws were written by charter lobbyists and protect the operators from full financial disclosure.

The Columbus Dispatch has had enough. In this editorial, it calls for legislation to compel charters to open their books for public inspection. Where public money goes, public accountability must follow.

No function of state government is more important than its constitutional obligation to “secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the state.” Education is the bedrock of democracy. That is why the Ohio Constitution, since 1851, has obligated the state to provide an education to each of its citizens.

How thoroughly and how efficiently the state fulfills this mandate should concern every Ohioan, every year, every generation.

But Ohioans’ ability to judge the state’s performance is threatened by state lawmakers’ willingness to hide from public view how the charter-school industry spends a sizable portion of taxpayer dollars.

In an era of privatization of much of primary and secondary education, taxpayers should insist that state lawmakers provide complete transparency of the expenditure of public funds for education.

State Rep. David J. Leland, D-Columbus, has introduced legislation to accomplish this goal. In fewer than 100 words, the bill declares “funds that the department of education pays to a community (charter) school or nonpublic school . . . are public funds and shall be subject to the same requirements related to permissible expenditures and audit by the auditor of state as public funds allocated to school districts.

“If a community school uses public funds to pay for services of an entity to manage the daily operations of that school or to provide programmatic oversight and support of that school, those funds maintain their status as public funds upon transfer.”

In recent years, Ohio earned an unwelcome reputation for having the nation’s worst oversight of the charter-school industry. No surprise, then, that Ohio has had some of the nation’s worst-performing charter schools.

The editorial goes on to detail the changes that are needed.

What this represents is a welcome recognition by the major media that charter schools cannot continue to operate as private schools with public money. A recent court decision in Ohio ruled, in accordance with the charter-friendly law, that anything purchased by the charter with public funds belongs to the charter operator, not the public. If the law is rewritten, that giveaway of public money must be ended.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Ohio, Privatization

Politico Reports on Expansion Plans of School Privatization Group

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2017 //
22

Politico’s Morning Edition posted this description of 50CAN, the pro-privatization organization that was started by hedge fund managers and big pharma in Connecticut:

FIRST IN MORNING EDUCATION: 50CAN’S GROWTH PLAN: The national education reform advocacy group, 50CAN, hopes to hire 1,000 new advocates by the year 2023. That’s a key part of the organization’s new growth plan, the first of its kind since 50CAN launched in 2011. The organization hopes those advocates will lead at least 250 policy campaigns across every single state to push on goals like more charter schools and holding schools and teachers accountable. At least two thirds of those policy pushes “will be at the neighborhood or regional level,” the plan says. 50CAN now cites 64 policy “wins” across 13 states, including a push for an A-F school grading system in Tennessee and a “more equitable public charter school funding in New Jersey.” To ensure future policy victories, 50CAN says that by 2023, its entire network of advocates “will be connected together through a best-in-class technology platform where they can plan campaigns, execute strategies and tactics, track and analyze campaign data in real time and gain key insights into how to increase their odds of success.”

50CAN will be pushing the DeVos-Jeb Bush agenda in every state. Charters and A-F ratings, which set up public schools for takeover to charter chains.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Alan Singer: Who Is Grading Those High-Stakes Tests?

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2017 //
18

Alan Singer pulls back the curtain to reveal the dirty little secret behind the high-stakes exams that determine the fate of teachers, students, administrators, and schools.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5922bf13e4b0b28a33f62dcd

Pearson hires minimally qualified people and pays them by the hour to determine whether you will be humiliated, fired, lose a promotion, or your school will be closed.

If you are a professional, your failure profits Pearson.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Testing

Education Week: Marketing the Charter School Market

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2017 //
12

Education Week is a paradox. On one hand, it has many excellent reporters who check facts and write lucidly without partisanship. On the other, the corporate entity has become a selling platform for technology and charter schools.

I used to blog regularly at EdWeek, in a column called “Bridging Differences,” with Deborah Meier. No one ever changed what I wrote. I know that editorial independence is central to a journal’s integrity.

But since I departed (and even before), Education Week needed advertising from the industry on which it was reporting, and it began to turn into a platform for the industry. EdWeek also receives funding from the Gates Foundation and the Walton Foundation, each of which has its own agenda.

And so I regularly open my email box to find advertisements from EdWeek for tech products, webinars, seminars, panels, events, etc.

The latest was a solicitation for a webinar about “Mastering the Charter School Market.” Part of the pitch was that charters would capture 20-40% of the “market” by 2035.

Where did they get that figure? I thought about it. Then I discovered the source: The projection was made by Bellwether Partners, a consulting firm founded by reformer Andrew Rotherham, a leader in the charter school movement who represents charter corporations and advocates. This 2015 report (slide 60) says that the charter schools will have 22-38% of the “market” by 2035. That assumes that the numerous scandals associated with deregulation and the resistance of parents and educators to privatization have not slowed the movement long before then.

I am posting this after the event, because this is not an advertisement but rather a post expressing my concern about Edweek’s descent into marketing for the edBiz, whether it is technology or charters.

The registration form can be found here.

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Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Media, Privatization

Benjamin Herold Reviews Evaluations of “Personalized Learning”

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2017 //
33

Larry Cuban posted this article by Benjamin Herold, who writes for Education Week about technology, on his blog.

https://larrycuban.wordpress.com/2017/05/21/personalized-learning-what-does-the-research-say-benjamin-herold/

The term “personalized learning” has been captured by the technology industry to represent computer-based instruction. Some people think it would be justifiable to refer to computer-based instruction as “depersonalized learning” since a computer is a machine and not a person.

The other terms the tech industry has used for marketing purposes are “individualized” and “customized.”

Herold’s review is balanced and appropriately critical, distinguishing between independent research and marketing.

The studies seem to use test scores as the best indicator of success. These scores may gauge of whether sutudents learned what the computer taught them, but says nothing about whether they could pass a test of similar material that the machine didn’t teach them.

And that’s without going into what should be the lasting effects of education: the ability to think independently, to ask questions, to think outside the box, to accomplish tasks for intrinsic purposes, rather than to win a prize.

Many educators think that the goal of computer-based instruction is to develop classrooms without teachers; a paraprofessional could be available to answer questions about the technology. Is that where the tech industry is headed? Consider this recent article in Bloomberg News which hailed the development of ships without sailors. “Doing away with sailors will make the high seas safer and cleaner.”

It sounds like a ghost story: A huge cargo vessel sails up and down the Norwegian coast, silently going about its business, without a captain or crew in sight. But if all goes as planned, it’s actually the future of shipping.

96% of all marine casualties are caused by human error. Solution: get rid of the humans. Problem solved.

Categories Education Industry, For-Profit, Technology

Alternet: What You Need to Know about School Privatization in YOUR State

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2017 //
16

Do you want to know where YOUR state stands in the race to privatize public money for private schools?

Alternet has an excellent summary of the Network for Public Education report on school privatization.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Network for Public Education, Privatization

Florida: Public School Parents Plead with Gov. Scott to Veto Disastrous Bill, Charter Schools Offer Incentives to Parents Who Write in Support

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2017 //
6

Here is a new charter school trick. The Florida legislature, which has an unseemly number of members who are directly connected to the charter industry, passed legislation that will benefit charters and harm public schools. Parents of public school students have been writing Governor Rick Scott and urging him to veto the bill. The public school parents are acting on their own. It would be unethical for their schools to encourage political activity. The two charter schools involved are part of the politically powerful for-profit Academica chain.

Some charter schools are offering parents an incentive to write the governor and urge him to sign the bill. At least two charter schools in Hialeah, Florida, are urging parents and students to contact the governor in support of the bill, which will help them and hurt public schools.

Some school choice advocates in South Florida are going so far as to offer incentives to parents in order to amplify the perception of public support for a controversial K-12 public schools bill that many are urging Gov. Rick Scott to veto.

At least two privately managed charter schools in Hialeah — Mater Academy Lakes High School and City of Hialeah Educational Academy — publicly advertised this week that they would give parents five hours’ credit toward their “encouraged” volunteer hours at the school, so long as they wrote a letter or otherwise urged Gov. Rick Scott to sign HB 7069.

“It is IMPERATIVE that the Governor, and the rest of the State of Florida, see what a POSITIVE DEMAND there is for this education bill,” read an alert on the homepage of Mater Academy Lakes’ website Thursday evening. “This is the strongest legislation supporting the charter school movement since charters were first established in Florida 20 years ago.”

“We need all of our Bear Family to show their support for HB 7069 and encourage your friends, family and children to get involved as well,” the message continued…

The two Hialeah charter schools’ advocacy and other promotional efforts by influential school choice organizations come in the wake of a groundswell of opposition from traditional public school supporters since lawmakers passed HB 7069 on May 8.

The nearly 10,000 phone calls, emails, letters and individual petition signatures received by Gov. Rick Scott were 3-to-1 against the bill, as of information provided Thursday evening. In contrast to the charters, there is no evidence that traditional public school advocates have offered incentives to boost support for their veto campaign.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article151507657.html#storylink=cpy

Public school advocates are pinning their hopes for a veto on a Republican governor who looks to Jeb Bush for guidance. Will he listen to public school parents? We will watch.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Florida, Privatization

Laura Chapman on Eric Hanushek

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2017 //
15

When Laura Chapman read Some DAMPoet’s poem, “Economists are Like Weathermen,” she responded with an informative comment. I know Eric (Rick) well. We served together for years on the Hoover Institution’s Koret Task Force on Education. I wrote a bit about Rick in “Reign of Error,” and pointed out that his work has long applied econometrics to education. He was featured as an expert voice in “Waiting for ‘Superman'” where he reinforced the film’s message that public education is failing, choice are better, bad teachers cause low scores, and the best way to raise test scores is to fire teachers who can’t raise test scores. He has testified as an expert witness in court cases against increased funding for schools. I quoted at length from one of his articles in which he claimed that firing the bottom 5-7 teachers and replacing them with average teachers would cause a leap in test scores that would make us equal to Finland. The Gross Domestic Product would then soar by $112 trillion, just because of those higher test scores.

Laura writes:

Don’t get me started. The creep of econometric thinking into education has gone beyond reason, and the reason is this: Economists are addicted to scores on tests as indicators of anything that catches their fancy–school quality, teacher quality, instructional quality, cognitive skills, worker skills, state ranking in economic growth, national ranks in productivity, the fate of the nation’s economy.

On March 9, 2017, The Wall Street Journal published an Op Ed by economist Eric A. Hanushek titled “American Teachers Unions Oppose Innovative Schools—in Africa with the subtitle “Bridge Academies show promising results in Kenya and Uganda, but unions see them only as a threat.”

It begins “No longer content to oppose educational innovation at home, the unions representing America’s teachers have gone abroad in search of monsters to slay.

For nearly a decade, Bridge International Academies has run a chain of successful private schools in the slums of Kenya and Uganda. A for-profit company, Bridge has shown that it’s possible to provide high-quality, low-cost primary education to poor children in the developing world….” https://www.wsj.com/articles/american-teachers-unions-oppose-innovative-schoolsin-africa-1489099360

Readers are at least informed that Dr. Hanushek s a consultant for Bridge International Academies. The WSJ is an advertorial for Bridge, well place to attract even more investors to this not so low cost system of education with all questions and answers delivered on computers.

Hanushek has been VAMing teachers since his dissertation, about 1968. He is a frequent contributor of dubious statistics to legal cases that blame teacher unions for students who are “underperforming.” Like Chetty he is a serial publisher of inferences about the fate of the economy based on student test scores.

I do not doubt that he and many economists are well-trained statisticians, but if economists who pontificate about schools could not rely on test scores as the coin of their realm, they would probably be out of the education business business.

Here is a sample of the amazing inferences that can be made when you rely only on formulas to think about schools. Quote:

“Our primary analysis relies on these estimates of skills for students educated in each of the states. Minnesota, North Dakota, Massachusetts, Montana, and Vermont make up the top five states, whereas Hawaii, New Mexico, Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi constitute the bottom five states. The top-performing state (Minnesota) surpasses the bottom-performing state (Mississippi) by 0.87 standard deviations.

Various analyses suggest that the average learning gain from one grade to the next is roughly between one-quarter and one-third of a standard deviation in test scores (Hanushek, Peterson, and Woessmann (2013), p. 72).

Thus, the average eighth-grade math achievement difference between the top- and the bottom-performing state amounts to about three grade-level equivalents – highlighting the problem of relying exclusively on school attainment without regard to quality. ”

From Hanushek, Eric A., Paul E. Peterson, and Ludger Woessmann. 2013. Endangering prosperity: A global view of the American school. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

These three economists are also responsible for the use of standard deviations to assert that this or that intervention or comparison of schools yield a gain of “days of learning,” or months, or years. Those inferential leaps are really absurd.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Teachers, Testing

Good News: Pro-Public School Activist Wins Seat on Portland, Oregon, School Board

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2017 //
4

Rita Moore, a pro-public education advocate, won a hotly contested seat on the Portland, Oregon, school board. Her son attended Portland public schools, and she has long been involved in support of public education. She holds a Ph.D. in political science.

She ran against a candidate who was principal of a KIPP school in Houston and worked also for TFA. See here.

In her response to a survey of candidates, she expressed her views about the importance of public education.

What is your stance on the movement to privatize education?

I am fundamentally opposed to efforts to privatize education. Free public education is America’s gift to the world. It has been the foundation of our society, the bedrock of our democracy, and the engine of economic growth, producing the American dream and making the US the capital of innovation.

Privatizing education is not good for students or this city. I am completely opposed to it, as is the vast majority of voters and residents of Portland. Public education is a door that all kids have the right to walk through and which we as a society have the obligation to fully fund.

Congratulations, Rita Moore!

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Portland, Privatization, Supporting public schools
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