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North Carolina: Vouchers for the Rich! Propaganda Wins!

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2024 //
6

Thomas Mills, a blogger in North Carolina, describes the hoax of “vouchers for all” in his state. Vouchers began as a way to offer new opportunity to poor kids. But since the General Assembly removed income caps on voucher families, vouchers have become a subsidy for rich kids who never attended public schools. The Republicans who passed universal vouchers knowingly and cynically turned them into a subsidy for the wealthy, a reverse Robin Hood scheme.

Mills writes:

This week, the North Carolina Opportunity Scholarship Program, also known as the voucher scheme, began accepting applications. House Speaker Tim Moore tweeted, “The expanded NC Opportunity Scholarship Program is now open for applications! In fact, the website was so inundated that it crashed at 12:15 am, shortly after going live. Thanks to the NC General Assembly, ALL families of K-12 students are now eligible to apply.”

When Moore says “ALL families,” he’s referring to wealthy families since the legislature eliminated the income cap for the vouchers. The site crashed because North Carolina has so many people already in private schools who now are eligible for state subsidized education. Rich folks who send their children to private schools are about to get a windfall while poor schools are going to lose funding. It’s Robin Hood in reverse.

The whole program is a scam, the epitome of a bait-and-switch. Republicans pushed through their voucher program as a way to level the playing field, offering poor families a way to send their children to private schools when public schools weren’t working for them. Now, they’re saying that families that don’t send their children to public schools shouldn’t have to pay for them. They have dropped any pretense of helping struggling families and moved straight to subsidizing rich people. According to Republicans, rich people have no community obligations.

Let’s be clear. The name “Opportunity Scholarship” is pure propaganda. There are two types of scholarships, need-based and merit-based. Giving vouchers to rich people just because they decide not to send their kids to public schools is a tax break, not a scholarship. And it’s a tax break designed for wealthy people at the expense of poor people.

Republicans are working hard to damage public schools. They fundamentally don’t believe in the responsibility of the state to provide a sound, basic education. They have cut per pupil spending, let teacher pay lag, and reduced support staff in schools. They’ve tried to dictate curriculum to indoctrinate students in a conservative philosophy, all while claiming public schools are brainwashing our kids with left wing ideas. They’ve left us with demoralized teachers and overworked staff and our children are paying the price.

Now, the state Supreme Court is about to get into the act, too. Thirty years ago, a group of students from North Carolina’s poor counties sued the state, claiming that their school systems lacked the funding to provide the quality of education that the state constitution demands. They won their suit and, since that time, the courts have reviewed funding to ensure that poor counties got the money they deserve.

However, with a new court dominated by far-right Republicans, the decision may be overturned. Chief Justice Paul Newby and his band of conservatives justices have not been shy about throwing out precedent, giving new meaning to an activist court. They will decide if the most recent allocation determined by the court will be rescinded. The GOP legislature contends that the court has no business telling the lawmakers how to spend tax dollars.

If the Republicans win, they will have essentially reinterpreted the constitution. Article 9, Section 2 of the constitution reads, “The General Assembly shall provide by taxation and otherwise for a general and uniform system of free public schools, which shall be maintained at least nine months in every year, and wherein equal opportunities shall be provided for all students.” Traditionally, the court has interpreted the “uniform system” of “equal opportunities” to mean the quality of education should be as good in poor counties as it is in rich ones. The GOP would render the clause either aspirational or maybe just a suggestion, despite the word “shall.”

The assault on public education in North Carolina is unprecedented and radical. Republicans aren’t just making cuts around the edges. They are changing the way we view public schools and our collective responsibilities. They are shifting resources and increasing the burden of financial responsibility on the poor while reducing the funds from the rich, just like they did with our tax system.

Ironically, the people who suffer the most are the people who make up the GOP base. Rural counties will watch their tax dollars go to wealthy families in urban and suburban areas while their public schools will suffer from increasing lack of revenue. Of course, Republican donors will almost certainly benefit. As they say, partisanship is a helluva drug.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Lies, North Carolina, Privatization, Propaganda, Vouchers

Gary Rubinstein: Why Don’t Success Academy High School Students Take Advanced Regents Exams?

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2024 //
12

Gary Rubinstein has been following the ups and downs of New York’s highest scoring charter school chain: Success Academy. Every year, the grades 3-8 test scores at the chain are through the roof. But Gary noticed that the high school students at Success Academy do not take Advsnced a regents exams as they do at the New York City’s highest performing high schools.

Gary examines this question:

Success Academy is a charter network with about 40 schools in the New York City area. They are known for their high standardized 3-8 test scores. Though it has been proved that their test scores are somewhat inflated by their practices of shedding their low performing students over the year and also by, at some schools, focusing exclusively on test prep in the months leading up to the tests, they still have these test scores to show their funders and the various charter school cheerleaders.

In June there was an article on the website of something called Albany Strategic Advisors, some kind of consulting firm about how well middle school students at Success Academy performed on four of the New York State Regents exams: Algebra I, Living Environment, Global History, and English. The last sentence of the second to last paragraph explains that these results are important because “Taking the exams in middle school allows students to take more advanced college preparatory courses in high school.”

These ‘more advanced college preparatory courses in high school’ include 10 other courses that have Regents exams including Geometry, Algebra II, Chemistry, Physics, US History, and Spanish. The minimum requirements for getting what is called ‘a Regents diploma’ in New York is one math Regents, one science Regents, one Social Studies Regents, and the English Regents. But to get an ‘Advanced Regents diploma’ you need all three maths and all three sciences and one foreign language Regents. Most competitive high school have their students take these other Regents which are known to be fairly straight forward tests with very generous curves.

About 8 years ago I noticed that there were no Regents scores for any of the other 10 exams in the Success Academy high school. Then 6 years ago I found that some of their students actually were taking some of the more difficult Regents but they were doing very poorly on them. And now, 6 years later, I checked up on them again to find that in the three Success Academy high schools which enroll a total of about 1,100 students from grades 9 to 12, they again do not have any scores for any of the Regents that are typically taken at competitive schools.

So why does this matter?

Well, Success Academy has spent eighteen years carefully cultivating their image. They want families to think that they have the highest expectations and that families should trust them to educate their children because those higher expectations will lead to those students learning the most. And we all know about their 3-8 state tests in Math and ELA. But it is pretty ‘odd’ that their students don’t take the more difficult Regents. The most likely reason for this is that Success Academy only wants information public that makes them look good and avoids any action that could reveal public data that reveals that they do not live up to their reputation. So I believe that they don’t allow their students to take the Regents because they believe that the scores on those Regents won’t be as impressive as their 3-8 state test scores compared to other schools. If I am right then this is an example of Success Academy choosing to preserve their inflated reputation over giving their students the opportunity to challenge themselves on these competitive exams.

Please open the link to finish the article. Nobody does this kind of close review better than Gary Rubinstein.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, New York, New York City, Standardized Testing

Los Angeles: Charter Schools Barred from Nearly Half of LA’s Public Schools

By dianeravitch
February 4, 2024 //
12

The board of the Los Angeles Unified School District adopted a new policy last week that will bar charter schools from “co-locating” in schools that enroll the most vulnerable students. This policy will provide stability to public schools that have been forced to give up classrooms and other facilities to privately-managed charters. Los Angeles and New York City both guarantee free public space to charter schools, which compels the host school to give up classrooms and other space that are not used 100% of the time.

The Los Angeles Daily News reported:

Charter schools will be barred from hundreds of Los Angeles Unified District school campuses under a new policy that is among the most restrictive of its kind.

The new rules, presented at a school board meeting Tuesday, Jan. 30, prevent charters from being sited in campuses that have been identified as serving vulnerable students, accounting for roughly 350 of about 770 school buildings in the district. Charter schools would still be offered space to operate in other LAUSD district school buildings.

The regulations prevent co-locations in low-performing schools, community schools that provide social services, and schools in the district’s Black Student Achievement Plan — immediately impacting about 21 charter schools — now co-located in those buildings — enrolling thousands of students who may need to move to new L.A. Unified campuses in the fall.

“This is one of those situations that, no matter what, we’re going to have some people dissatisfied on either side,” said L.A. school superintendent Alberto Carvalho, who created the new regulations at the direction of the district school board, an effort led by board president Jackie Goldberg and board member Rocio Rivas.

Carvalho said the new regulations are within the bounds of a 2000 state law compelling California districts to provide classroom space for charter schools. There are currently 50 charter schools co-located in 52 LAUSD school campuses, serving roughly 11,000 students. Thirteen additional charters have requested space for the upcoming school year.

“I believe that what has been presented may in many ways alleviate some of the issues,” he added. “However, we need to be vigilant and honest about unintended consequences of well intentioned policies.”

The new rules are a reversal for a city that historically has been friendly to charter schools and was immediately opposed by charter advocates, who threatened legal action in a letter to the school board as soon as the new policy was announced….

The long-simmering conflict over charter schools in Los Angeles reached a flashpoint in September when the board issued a resolution compelling Carvalho to create the policy and spelled out many of the specific components it should contain.

Categories California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Los Angeles

Billy Townsend: America Rejects DeSantis and “the Florida Blueprint”

By dianeravitch
February 4, 2024 //
64

Florida blogger Billy Townsend was delighted to see Ron DeSantis get booted from the Republican primaries after the Iowa caucuses. DeSantis had large ambitions, thinking that the nation wanted his harsh rightwing policies. But he made the mistake of thinking he could run to the right of Trump. There’s no space there.

Billy hopes that voters saw through the hype about “the Florida Blueprint” and DeSantis’s promise to “Make America Florida.”

Before the primaries, in March 2023, he predicted that DeSantis would flounder, and he was right:

The same Florida state “government” of gangsters that destroyed the Florida state education system will invade the United States of America in 2024. Whoever wins this civil war-as-referendum — the gangsters or the country — will control the U.S. Military and federal law enforcement power.

We don’t know who will command Florida’s invasion yet — tiny Emperor Ron DeSantis (with his pseudo VP Jeb Bush) or Florida-ism’s Pope Donald Trump. But it makes no difference. Whoever wins their gross song of ice and fire will then lead Florida’s army of the dead right toward Colorado and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Florida’s political and cultural invasion of the country should be laughable. The Florida “blueprint” has made us a hollowed out shell of a state — pleasantly livable for people with capital (like me) because a few big private interests team up to “govern” our warm spaces enjoyably for customers who can pay. And a few cities, like mine (Lakeland), which is blessed with a money-belching socialist power utility, create a nice and warm urban experience.

But as a state, rather than a vacation destination, retirement home, or temporary crash pad for remote workers and tech bros, we are: extremely high cost, extremely low wage, extremely corrupt, high inflation, nation’s worst education “learning rate,” bad public service, high crime, low birth rate, high and spiking abortion rate, and very very old.

If America fully grasps that Florida Blueprint by 2024, I feel quite certain that we will repulse this absurd invasion-by-mafia. The referendum on Florida should not be a close run affair.

But our worst American billionaires and mouthiest showboating sheriffs like hollowed out states; and they far prefer mafias to unions or citizens mobilized politically around public good.

Florida is their model state for decadent capital cut free from any public oversight, public good, or sense of shared citizenship. And they will try to impose that Florida on everybody else by pretending that Florida is not Florida. Anti-civic capital is often dumb. But it’s heavily armed; and it has great sway — although not total away — over what the public is told.

Crushing Florida’s invasion — explicitly rejecting the failed “Florida Blueprint” at the national level — is crucial to any effort to reform Florida at home. The Florida Blueprint must culminate, in the military sense, as an expansive political force. That’s the sine qua non of Florida’s future…

The MAGA Pope thrashed the Tiny Emperor

Well, MAGA Pope Trump’s GOP smashed the tiny emperor’s irrationally cocky army of Pushaws and private jet jockeys as easily as Trump gropes unwilling women. (Sorry Trumpers, he is who he is. I can’t make your citizenship choices for you. But you will own them. Expect no moral mercy or understanding from me this time around.)

Trump’s formally adjudicated sexual abuse and Capitol Lynch Mob leadership aside, his defenestration of DeSantis is a useful first step. It’s good for Florida and America.

Even better, when America as a whole saw the “Florida Blueprint” personified by Gov. High Heels, America as a whole rejected Gov. Pudding Fingers thoroughly and humiliatingly, with the national contempt growing almost by the moment. Watching DeSantis in the polls has been like watching the Enron stock price circa October 2001 (go Google it, youngs).

Yes, in large part, that’s because he’s personally very weird and off-putting and cruel in the way that people who torture cats are weird and off-putting and cruel.

But it was also because Florida, as a model for America, got a thorough thrashing — including by Trump himself. Of all people, Florida Man Bonesaw Jesus himself attacked the Florida Model of “governing” a week or two after I published my piece.

He sounded just like me. LOL. I’d bet a lot of money his gross people read my stuff.

The GOP primary campaign ended that day, with the Trump campaign’s unanswered dismantling of Florida as an expansive idea. A loooooonnnnnng, slow humiliation ensued, tempered only by extensive luxury travel.

In some ways Trump is now running as the ultimate Florida man — full of gross indulgence and utterly devoid of any concern for the state where he lives. Only a Florida Man would have the chutzpah to run against Florida from Florida when the party he owns has been in power here for a generation…

Anyway, ya’ll will generally share my mirth for now in laughing at DeSanctimonious. We can do that together. Trump gives you permission.

But then you’re all gonna try to convince yourselves it’s fine to line up behind a more senile version of the Zieglers writ large — the Capitol Lynch Mob leader with a terrible economic record, a jury-adjudicated sexual abuser, a criminal openly running on “retribution” and “dictatorship on Day 1,” who you all know would rape your wife and daughter and force them to have an abortion after getting rid of Roe v. Wade.

You’re going to line up meekly and pathetically behind the idol who defiled your religion and turned it against Jesus Christ Himself.

If you are enjoying the news from Florida, open the link and keep reading.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Corruption, Democracy, DeSantis, Economy, Education Industry, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Florida, Trump

ProPublica: Private Schools in Ohio Urge Parents to Get a Voucher

By dianeravitch
February 1, 2024 //
60

ProPublica reported that private schools in Ohio are actively encouraging parents to seek vouchers for their children to supplement their tuition. This enables the private schools to reduce student aid and also to raise tuition.

ProPublica said:

Tara Polansky and her husband were torn about where to enroll their daughter when they moved back to Columbus, Ohio, a year and a half ago. The couple, who work for a nonprofit organization and a foundation, respectively, were concerned about the quality of the city’s public schools and finally decided to send her to Columbus Jewish Day School. It was a long drive out to the suburbs every day, but they admired the school for its liberal-minded outlook.

So Polansky was startled when, in September, the school wrote to families telling them to apply for taxpayer-funded vouchers to cover part of the $18,000 tuition. In June, the Republican-controlled state government had expanded the state’s private-school voucher program to increase the value of the vouchers — to a maximum of $8,407 a year for high school students and $6,165 for those in lower grades — and, crucially, to make them available to all families.

For years the program, EdChoice, targeted mostly lower-income students in struggling school districts. Now it is an entitlement available to all, with its value decreasing for families with higher incomes but still providing more than $7,000 annually for high school students in solidly middle-class families and close to $1,000 for ones in the wealthiest families. Demand for EdChoice vouchers has nearly doubled this year, at a cost to Ohio taxpayers of several hundred million additional dollars, the final tally of which won’t be known for months.

That surge has been propelled by private school leaders, who have an obvious interest: The more voucher money families receive, the less schools have to offer in financial aid. The voucher revenue also makes it easier to raise tuition.

“The Board has voted to require all families receiving financial assistance … to apply for the EdChoice Program. We also encourage all families paying full tuition to apply for this funding,” read the email from the Columbus Jewish Day School board president. She continued: “I am looking forward to a great year — a year of learning, growing, and caring for each other. Let’s turn that caring into action by applying for the EdChoice Program.”

Polansky bridled at the direction. She had long subscribed to the main argument against private school vouchers: that they draw resources away from public education. It was one thing for her family to have chosen a private school. But she did not want to be part of an effort that, as she saw it, would decrease funding for schools serving other Columbus children. Together with another parent, she wrote a letter objecting to the demand.

“For this public money to go to kids to get a religious education is incredibly wrong,” she told ProPublica. “I absolutely don’t want to pull money out of an underfunded school district.”

For decades, Republicans have pushed, with mixed success, for school voucher programs in the name of parental choice and encouraging free-market competition among schools. But in just the past couple of years, vouchers have expanded to become available to most or all children in 10 states: Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah and West Virginia. The expansion has been spurred by growing Republican dominance in many state capitals, U.S. Supreme Court rulings loosening restrictions on taxpayer funding for religious schools, and parental frustration with progressive curricula and with public school closures during the coronavirus pandemic. Many of the expanded programs are experiencing high demand, which voucher advocates are taking as affirmation of their argument: that families would greatly prefer to send their children to private schools, if only they could afford them.

But much of the demand for the expanded voucher programs is in fact coming from families, many quite affluent, whose children were already attending private schools. In Arizona, the first state to allow any family to receive public funding for private schools or homeschooling, the majority of families applying for the money, about $7,000 per student, were not recently enrolled in public school. In Florida, only 13% of the 123,000 students added to the state’s expanded school-choice program had switched from public school.

In Ohio, the effects of the move toward looser eligibility in recent years was clear even prior to last summer’s big expansion: Whereas in 2018, fewer than a tenth of the students who were newly receiving vouchers that year had not attended a public school the year before, by 2022, more than half of students who were new to EdChoice were already in private schools.

That ratio will climb much higher in Ohio, now that the vouchers are available for families at all income levels and private schools are explicitly telling parents to apply. The surge in applications this school year has been so dramatic that it’s nearing the total enrollment for all private schools in the entire state.

At St. Brendan’s the Navigator, on the other side of the Columbus beltway from the Jewish Day School, the missive arrived on the last day of July. The letter, signed by the Rev. Bob Penhallurick, called the expanded vouchers a “tremendous boon to our school families and Catholic education across Ohio” and said that all families were “strongly encouraged to apply for and receive the EdChoice scholarship.” He noted that, depending on their income level, families could receive up to $6,165 for each child — nearly covering the $6,975 tuition. “Even a small scholarship is a major blessing for you, the school, and the parish,” he wrote.

And then he added, in italics, that if a family did not apply for the vouchers, “we will respect that decision,” but that “supplemental financial aid from the parish in this case will require a meeting” with either himself or another pastor at the school…

At Holy Family School near Youngstown, the directive arrived a few days later, on Aug. 3. “As you are aware, ALL students attending Holy Family School will be eligible for the EdChoice Scholarship. We are requesting that all families register their child/ren for this scholarship as soon as possible,” wrote the school’s leadership. And then it added in bold: “It is imperative that you register for EdChoice for each of your students. We are waiting to send invoices until your EdChoice Scholarship has been awarded.”

In an interview at the school, Holy Family principal Laura Parise said the push to apply for EdChoice had succeeded. “One hundred percent of our students are on it,” she said. “We made it that way — we made our families fill out the form, and we’re going from there.”

There is more. Open the link.

Categories Education Industry, Ethics, Funding, Ohio, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Legislatures Should Not Mandate How to Teach or Ban Instructional Strategies

By dianeravitch
January 31, 2024 //
24

Several states have endorsed legislation requiring teachers to use “the science of reading” in their classrooms. Only the “science of reading.” The legislators, of course, know nothing about teaching reading but they have it on good authority (reports in the media) that there is only one correct way to teach reading, so they feel it is appropriate to mandate that way and ban other ways.

As someone living in New York City, I don’t know whether to laugh or groan. In 2002, Michael Bloomberg, the new mayor, took control of the New York City public schools. He selected attorney Joel Klein as the city’s all-powerful chancellor. A year later, after much deliberation, Klein and Bloomberg announced a single citywide curriculum in reading and mathematics. With the exception of a few high-performing schools, all teachers were required to teach Balanced Literacy. Phonics advocates howled but they were dismissed. Any teacher who taught reading during the three terms of Mayor Bloomberg was mandated to teach Balanced Literacy.

But now, Balanced Literacy is out, and phonics is in. Are there new longitudinal studies showing the success of one and the failure of the other? No, but there is a new zeitgeist, and Americans are always ready to rally around the latest cure-all.

Some states are not only mandating “the science of reading,” but banning Balanced Literacy and its practices. Louisiana banned the use of three-cuing in 2022. In North Carolina, the General Assembly also banned the use of “three-cuing.” Three-cuing is a feature of Balanced Literacy.

As of last October, three-cuing has been banned in Arkansas, Indiana, Florida, Texas, Ohio, and Kansas.

What is three-cuing? The definition in Louisiana is quoted at the end of this post.

In addition, three states have banned the program called Reading Recovery: Arkansas, Louisiana, and Indiana.

I have not seen evaluations or experimental evidence proving that students read better and comprehend better if teachers use only one instructional strategy and no other. The fourth grade scores in states that hold back third graders with low scores are proof of nothing, other than the certainty that scores go up when low-scoring students are not in the testing pool.

Suppose a first-grade reading teacher is fully onboard with phonics; suppose she does everything exactly by the book and is devoted to everything associated with “the science of reading”? This otherwise blameless teacher must take care not to show students how to use context cues! If she does so, she has broken the law! Will she be subject to prosecution and imprisonment for using the wrong method?

There has been a vigorous campaign to install phonics as the best way to teach reading. I repeat for the nth time that I’ve always been a proponent of phonics. I remember when Balanced Literacy became a national fad in the 1980s and 1990s; every publisher endorsed it (except Open Court). And I opposed it because I typically look skeptically on fads, movements, and panaceas.

The struggle between phonics and “whole word” methods has been ongoing since the 1830s. The pendulum swings back and forth. Now, everything from the big publishers will be decodable. Wherever Rudolf Fleisch may be, he is very happy (he wrote a book in the 1950s called Why Johnny Can’t Read, calling for a revival of phonics, which had been replaced by the Dick and Jane readers and the “look-say” method).

But it’s irresponsible to pass laws banning other ways of teaching! Wouldn’t it be wise to wait for some solid results before declaring that there is one and only one way to teach reading?

My view: Teachers should be prepared to teach phonics and other methods. No instructional method should be banned. Teachers should know a variety of teaching strategies and do what’s best for the children in front of them.

Three-cuing as defined in Louisiana law:

Act 517 of the 2022 Louisiana Legislative Session prohibits the use of the three-cueing system, or the MSV technique, in curriculum and instructional materials. This approach has been proven ineffective by empirical research in teaching students to read. This guidance document provides an explanation of what the three-cueing system is, what to look for when identifying these strategies in curricular materials, why it is not best for students learning to read, and what instructional strategies are proven effective for teaching students to read and comprehend.


What is the “Three-Cueing System?”


The three cueing system is an approach to foundational skills instruction that involves the use of three different types of instructional cues: semantic (gaining meaning from context and sentence-level cues), syntactic or grammatical features, and grapho-phonic (spelling patterns). When students encounter words that they cannot read automatically, they are prompted to question themselves using the following three questions: Does it look right? Does it sound right? Does it make sense?

At the earliest stages of learning to read, students are prompted to default to semantic or syntactic cues before attempting to use grapho-phonic cues. Students are encouraged to use illustrations to “guess” the meaning of words in predictably-written texts.

As part of the three-cueing system, teachers analyze student reading errors using the “MSV” technique and seek to determine if reading errors are related to “meaning, structure, or visual” issues. If students’ errors are meaning-related, the teacher will focus instructional efforts on supporting a student in using semantic cues to read passages. If the issues are related to structure, the teacher will focus on supporting students’ use of syntactic cues, and if the errors are visual, the teacher will prompt students to use grapho-phonic strategies.

As evidence mounts against the three-cueing system, many programs no longer refer to this instructional approach using this terminology, so identifying three-cueing in curricular resources requires careful observation of the strategies used to guide students as they learn to read.

When Might I See “Three-Cueing?”

The three-cueing approach is most-often found during foundational skills instruction in grades K-2. Some of the common prompts associated with this approach – “Does this make sense?” or “Look at the picture” – can be appropriate in other instructional contexts, such as when a student is encouraged to use illustrations to support deeper comprehension of stories, or when students are monitoring their own reading, but they are not effective strategies or prompts for teaching students to read words on a page. Instead of relying on multiple, varied cues, students should instead be consistently prompted to decode words using learned spelling and syllabication patterns.
As the three-cueing approach typically involves teachers prompting students to use different cues, this type of instruction is often found in small-group or individual settings.

It is a hallmark of “Balanced Literacy.”

Categories Data, Education Industry, Literacy, Teachers and Teaching

New Hampshire: Another Day, Another Charter School Scandal

By dianeravitch
January 30, 2024 //
6

New Hampshire reluctantly accepted federal money to open new charters. The reluctance occurred when Democrats were in charge of the legislature. Once Republicans captured control of the legislature, the reluctance disappeared. Governor Sununu selected a home-schooling parent as state commissioner of education, and New Hampshire is now all in for vouchers and charters.

But New Hampshire can’t escape certain inevitable problems that accompany school choice:

First, sending public money to private schools does not improve education; in fact, it weakens the public schools, attended by the vast majority.

Second, vouchers always cost more than was predicted.

Third, most vouchers will be used by kids already attending private schools.

Fourth, many charter operators are more interested in money than in the hard work of education.

New Hampshire is now going through the throes of a charter school closure. Four other new charter schools in the state have closed.

New Hampshire Public Radio reported:

A charter school in Exeter is closing less than two years after it opened, as former school officials face an ongoing investigation for alleged embezzlement and fraud.

“We tried everything that we could to save the school but sadly, the obstacles were insurmountable,” Jennifer Roopenian, the current chair of the Coastal Waters Chartered Public School board of trustees, told NHPR via email on Sunday.

Roopenian said the board learned of another “financial discrepancy” last week, and “despite our attempts to find a solution, the board had to make the heartbreaking decision to close the school.”

The development comes as the Exeter Police Department is pursuing two investigations into former officials associated with the school, which served students from kindergarten through 12th grade. One investigation involves alleged tampering with a public record; the other involves alleged embezzlement. State agencies, including the New Hampshire Attorney General’s office and New Hampshire Department of Education, say they are also communicating with the police about the allegations but declined to give more details.

Coastal Waters Chartered Public School opened in 2022 with a mission inspired by Waldorf teaching, which focuses on arts, nature and creativity. But some parents say there were red flags that the school was in trouble early on, and no one — the state, or the school board of trustees — was providing proper oversight to ensure its success.

By this winter, the school had lost more than half its student population since its opening year.

“They sold a really good story about the Waldorf method, about how kids would be learning in traditional ways as well as Waldorf ways,” says Stephanie Carr Thomas, a former Coastal Waters parent who pulled her children out of the school in 2022. “But that’s not what happened.”

Coastal Waters Chartered Public School is one of a handful of charters that have opened in New Hampshire amid increased funding and a growing interest in school choice. Charter schools are approved by the State Board of Education and receive funding directly from the state, about $9,000 per student. In 2022, Coastal Waters also won a $1.36 million federal grant as part of the New Hampshire Department of Education’s charter school expansion initiative.

Nicole Mazur, a former Coastal Waters parent and board member, said the school’s alternative vision drew families who couldn’t afford private school but wanted more personalized, outdoor-based education for their kids. And at the beginning, she said, many parents tried to help the school succeed.

“There were people wanting to help and volunteer, and helping to work out whatever kinks there were, just saying: ‘Tell me where to be and I’ll be there, and we’ll help,’’’ Mazur recalled. “There was a lot of excitement and positivity.”

But she said that excitement quickly gave way to concerns about the school’s facilities and finances…

In late 2022, Mazur and several other parents quit the board of trustees and pulled their kids out of the school, citing concerns about their children’s well-being and lack of financial transparency by the board chairman and treasurer, William Libby. Libby did not respond to NHPR’s request for comment.

Reports from both the state and the school show that enrollment continued to shrink over the last year, from 128 students in 2022 to 47 students as of last week…

Some Coastal Waters families say it’s unclear what power the education department has in its own investigation. The department’s misconduct investigations typically involve licensed individuals who have violated the educator code of conduct or code of ethics. But some former Coastal Waters officials didn’t have New Hampshire educator licenses to begin with.

The state requires charter schools to ensure at least half of its teaching staff either hold state certification or have three years of teaching experience. Roopenian, the current Coastal Waters board chair, said the school’s most recent teaching staff met those requirements.

Jesse Peloski, who withdrew his children from Coastal Waters in late 2022, said he worries the mechanisms for reporting and monitoring concerns about charter schools are “potentially very broken.”

“There is a huge desire for alternatives to public schooling,” he said. “But there’s also a huge opportunity for exploitation there.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Ethics, Fraud, New Hampshire, Scandals, School Choice

John Thompson: Oklahoma’s Leaders Engage in Strange, Irresponsible Behavior

By dianeravitch
January 30, 2024 //
16

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, keeps a close watch on state government and the state legislature. He has friends in both parties, so he is diplomatic. But since I don’t live in Oklahoma, I read what he reports in this post with a mixture of amazement and amusement. I can’t believe these people think they will improve education by their shenanigans. There are serious and reasonable people in Oklahoma. Unfortunately, they do not run the state.

John also forwarded to me a critique of pending legislation in the State Senate that would require every science teacher to give equal time to evolution and “intelligent design,” i.e. creationism. The critique came from the National Center for Science Education. I repeat: Where are the sane people? The grown-ups?

He writes:

Our Internet and phone went out for five days as the legislature’s bill filing period closed, so I was limited to learning the latest craziness of the national MAGA campaign, and national coverage of Oklahoma news. For example, State Superintendent Ryan Walters selected “Chaya Raichik, the woman behind the ‘Libs of TikTok’ social media account,” as member of the Oklahoma library media advisory committee. She has no background in education and does not live in Oklahoma. And the governor has already “banned the use of TikTok by any executive branch agency or employee and blacklisted the software from all state networks and state managed devices.”

But, the Oklahoman reported, “Walters said he put Raichik on the advisory committee because she was on the front lines showing the world exactly what the radical left is all about — lowering standards, porn in schools and pushing ‘woke indoctrination’ on kids.”

The Oklahoman also explained, “Last year, a ‘Libs of TikTok’ post drew attention to a video posted by an elementary school librarian in Tulsa.” The Libs of TikTok version “had been edited from her original TikTok” and identified the teacher and the school. The Oklahoman explained:

After the post was made, the Ellen Ochoa Elementary School in Tulsa received a bomb threat on Aug. 22. That day Ryan Walters had also retweeted the “Libs of TikTok” post.

The threat appeared to have been made in retaliation for a librarian’s public post on TikTok.

Also leading the recent news, Republican Senator Nathan Dahm’s Senate Bill 1837 sought to:

Create the “Common Sense Freedom of Press Control Act.” The measure requires criminal background checks of every member of the news media, licensing of journalists through the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the completion of a “propaganda free” training course through the Oklahoma State Department of Education, a $1 million liability insurance policy and quarterly drug tests.

KOSU reported that they would also have to “attend an eight-hour ‘propaganda-free’ safety training developed by PragerU.”

Not to be outdone, Republican Rep. Juston Humphrey’s House Bill 3084, sought to ban:

“Students who purport to be an imaginary animal or animal species, or who engage in anthropomorphic behavior commonly referred to as furries at school” from participating in class and school activities.

Humphrey would “require parents or guardians to pick the student up from school. … But, if parents are unable to pick the student up, the bill says ‘animal control services shall be contacted to remove the student.’”

Humphrey also filed:

House Bill 3133, as it is currently worded, states that any person who is of Hispanic descent living within the state of Oklahoma; is a member of a criminal street gang as such term is defined in state statutes; and has been convicted of a gang-related offense enumerated in state statute shall be deemed to have committed an act of terrorism and will be subject to property forfeiture.

Humphrey had previously said “he intends to file legislation that will require any Oklahoma elected official known to be in support of a terrorist organization to be removed from their seat.” He did so to stop “Hollywood’s fake agenda.”

Other Republicans contributed bills such as Sen. Dusty Deevers’ Senate Bill 1958 “that would no longer allow Oklahomans to file for divorce on the grounds of incompatibility, also known as no-fault divorce.”

And Rep. Jim Olsen:

Filed legislation to require the Ten Commandments be displayed in all public school classrooms.” It “would require each classroom to clearly display a poster or framed copy of the Ten Commandments, measuring at least 16 inches wide and 20 inches tall, beginning in the 2024-2025 school year. The bill also outlines the specific text to be used for the display.

He did so because “The Ten Commandments is one of the foundations of our nation,” and “Publicly and proudly displaying them in public school classrooms will serve as a reminder of the ethics of our state and country as students and teachers go about their day.”

Olsen also “pointed to numerous passages in the Bible he said clearly endorsed corporal punishment as a part of proper child training, including Hebrews 12:11, which states, ‘Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterword it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.’”

Others continued the filing of bills to support Ryan Walters’ agenda. For instance, Rep. Tom Gann:

Said he is taking a proactive step toward safeguarding Oklahoma’s public school students with the introduction of House Bill 3112. The bill would prohibit schools and school districts from accepting financial donations or gifts from countries (meaning China) designated as “hostile” or “Countries of Particular Concern (CPC)” by the United States Secretary of State.

And Chris Banning “released a statement applauding State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters for working to eliminate all references to American Library Association guidelines in Oklahoma’s Information Literacy Standards and proposing new standards that are aligned with Oklahoma values.”

I kept scrolling back from December and January filings until I got to two other types of statements For example Oklahoma House Speaker Charles McCall’s, praised:

The conservative rating for the Oklahoma Legislature after the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Foundation’s Center for Legislative Accountability (CLA) released its 2023 ratings of the voting records of state legislators in all fifty states. Oklahoma was ranked as the second.  

But also I read a number of Republican statements condemning the bomb threats directed at the Tulsa Union Public Schools after the Libs of TikTok’s false post which likely prompted the threats. For example. “Rep. Ross Ford, R-Broken Arrow, vowed to help track down those who have made recent bomb threats made against several schools in the Union Public Schools district.”

So, what has the rightwing done in terms of policy when they could have been protecting children and educators? Gov. Stitt appointed Nellie Tayloe Sanders, “who last year helped advance a controversial Catholic charter school proposal (the St. Isidore religious school)” as his new secretary of education.

Worse, on Newsmax, Stitt seemed to warn of a civil war prompted by a confrontation between the Texas National Guard and President Biden. He certainly seemed to say that Oklahoma and our National Guard would side with Texas against the U.S..

And Ryan Walter’s confusing and flawed $16 million teacher bonus program is now clawing back $50,000 incentives they gave to teachers who were doing their best to follow the confusing application rules that Walters’ staff mismanaged.

That’s just the latest batch of the rightwing’s frightening behavior. Some serious reporters dismiss “headline-grabbing proposals such as prohibiting so-called furry costumes in public schools and the licensing and drug testing of journalists [that] have little chance of passage,” arguing that “scores of other bills, if passed, could mean big changes for Oklahomans in everything from land sales and medical marijuana to prescription drugs and state pension system investments.”

But, reading the proposed legislation, it seems overwhelmingly impossible that more good than harm could come out of the 2024 session. And, the historian in me worries that these irrational, but not passable, bills could do even more harm than the legislation that could come out of the Republican-controlled legislature. After all, they are parts of a continuing barrage against trust in government and democratic principles.

So, what can be done to curb the stress the MAGAs are imposing?

We can hope that more adult Republicans will push back against their extremist colleagues. Or, I guess we could wish for more ice storms that will shut down the Internet so we don’t need to dwell on their threats to democracy.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Freedom of the Press, Ignorance, Oklahoma

Oklahoma: Should the Public Fund a Religious Charter School?

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2024 //
39

The big issue currently raising hackles in Oklahoma is whether a Catholic Church should be allowed to operate a publicly-funded virtual charter school.

Leave aside, for the moment, whether the state should be funding a religious school at all.

Leave aside, for now, the fact that multiple evaluations have reported that virtual schools get worse results than brick-and-mortar schools.

Leave aside, for now, the fact that Ohlahoma already has seven virtual schools already.

The state attorney general is opposed to it.

But Governor Kevin Stitt and the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual School Board approved the idea (3-2), so the issue will be resolved in court.

Governor Stitt just selected one of the Board’s members to be his top education advisor:

OKLAHOMA CITY — An Oklahoma official who voted in favor of founding the nation’s first religious charter school will serve as Gov. Kevin Stitt’s next education secretary.

Nellie Tayloe Sanders, of Kingfisher, is the third member of the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board to join the Stitt administration. She is the second to do so after approving a Catholic charter school in a landmark 3-2 vote last year. Stitt was a staunch advocate of the school.

As education secretary, Sanders will serve as the governor’s top adviser on school policy. She will be paid $25,000 a year for the position, according to the Governor’s Office.

 Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board member Nellie Tayloe Sanders, left, pictured at an Oct. 9 meeting in Oklahoma City, is Gov. Kevin Stitt’s choice to be his education secretary. (Photo by Nuria Martinez-Keel/Oklahoma Voice)

“My goal is to empower parents with choices and support teachers in unleashing their full potential – moving beyond the constraints of politics and bureaucracy,” Sanders said in a statement Wednesday. “Governor Stitt’s commitment to educational freedom resonates deeply with me.”

Sanders resigned from her seat on the Statewide Virtual Charter School Board on Sunday in an email to Senate President Pro Tem Greg Treat, his office confirmed. The Senate leader had appointed Sanders to the board in February to oversee the seven Oklahoma charter schools that primarily teach online.

However, she won’t leave the board entirely. The education secretary holds a non-voting seat.

The board’s president, Robert Franklin, said the news of her appointment to the governor’s Cabinet caught him off guard.

“If you were asking me (about) a laundry list of colleagues that I thought had a seasoned background and a footprint in Oklahoma’s educational landscape, I wouldn’t have picked Mrs. Sanders,” Franklin said. “But I know she’s thoughtful. I know she’s kind. I know she’s an engaging person. So, I certainly wish her well.”

In other developments, the judge in the Catholic virtual charter school case stepped aside, because he had relationships with people on both sides of the issue.

Lawyers involved said the case was starting all over because the state board had entered into a contract with St. Isidore, and the board itself had new members.

One new board member said that the Catholic Church sponsoring the school would not provide a Catholic education, but the church disagreed.

Appointed Oct. 27, one of the new SVCSB members is Brian Shellem, a former Edmond mayoral candidate and the president of Advanced Automotive Equipment.

Shellem has also been appointed by Gov. Kevin Stitt to serve on the new Statewide Charter School Board, which the Oklahoma Legislature created last session to replace the SVCSB on July 1. It will become the new board overseeing virtual charter schools and other charter schools.

Shellem said that although he was not a board member when the SVCSB decided to authorize St. Isidore, he supports more educational choices for students, as long as those choices meet the right educational standards and requirements.

“The (St. Isidore) contract is not to provide religious education, it’s to provide education and a curriculum that the state requires, and I don’t think they should be disqualified because they are a Catholic school,” Shellem said. “I equate it to if you go to a car wash and you pay $20 for a car wash and then they go, ‘Hey, we’re gonna give you for free the wheel package and the air freshener,’ and they don’t charge you, [now you’ve got] a $5 value, but we’re not charging you for it. The state’s not contracting them to teach religious education, but it happens to be in that environment. They’re getting contracted to teach the curriculum that’s required by the state.”

Throughout their application process, St. Isidore leaders have indicated that the school intends to provide students with a Catholic education.

Shellem said he believes charter schools are public schools, so he could understand how including the proverbial extra car wash package that is Catholic education could create some legal questions to be dealt with in court.

[Note: You may have seen this article Friday. I moved it because it was supposed to appear today.]

Categories Disruption, Education Industry, Oklahoma, Privatization, Religion, Republicans, Separation of church and state, Technology, Virtual Charter Schools

Indiana: Operators of Virtual Charter Schools Indicted on Multiple Counts of Fraud

By dianeravitch
January 27, 2024 //
19

Guess what? Another massive scandal involving virtual charter schools. Not ho-hum because the money skimmed off is a lot: $44 million. The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana said it was the biggest fraud case he had handled.

If you recall, the biggest virtual charter school fraud case ever happened in California, where the A3 charter chain skimmed off hundreds of millions of dollars. In Pennsylvania, Nick Trombetta, founder of the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, was sent to prison in 2018 for 20 months for fraud. Steven Ingersoll, the optometrist who founded four virtual charter schools in Bay City, Michigan, received a prison sentence of 40 months. And who can forget Ohio’s ECOT Man (Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow), who collected $1 billion from the state over 20 years, gave lots of campaign donations, but declared bankruptcy when the state auditor asked him to refund millions for phantom students?

We know all this. We know that students in virtual charter schools get low scores, have low graduation rates, collect generous public funding, but the money keeps flowing. Why?

New story: Indiana.

A federal grand jury returned indictments against the operators of two online charter schools in Indiana, the Indiana Virtual School (IVS) and the Indiana Virtual Pathways Academy (IVPA). The operators inflated their enrollments to collect state monies. Each defendant faces 10-20 years in federal prison for each count if convicted. The charges are conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. The group received over $44 million from the state. Most of the students either never attended the schools or left but remained on the rolls.

FOX 59 in Indianapolis reported:

INDIANAPOLIS — Officials with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Indiana released more information about a recent indictment brought forward in a multi-million dollar education-related fraud scheme.

According to the office, three men were officially indicted in relation to the scheme, including:

  • Tom Stoughton, 74, a Carmel resident who was indicted on 16 counts of wire fraud, 57 counts of money laundering and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud
  • Phillip Holden, 62, a Middletown resident who was indicted on 16 counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud
  • Percy Clark, 81, a Carmel resident and the former superintendent of Lawrence Township schools, who was indicted on 16 counts of wire fraud, 11 counts of money laundering and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

In addition, officials said that 61-year-old Christopher King, a Green Fork resident, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

According to previous reports, officials allege that the individuals named in the indictment received more than $44 million in funding from the Indiana Department of Education to operate two online charter schools: the Indiana Virtual School and the Indiana Virtual Pathways Academy.

Officials said that IVPA was an offshoot of IVS that was created in 2017 so IVS could avoid losing its charter with Daleville Community Schools. This comes after IVS reportedly received an F grade from the Indiana Department of Education.

The individuals listed in the indictment reportedly used fraudulent enrollment reporting methods to receive funding from the state that they were not owed nor supposed to be eligible for.

Between 2016 through 2019, the defendants submitted false numbers for more than 4,500 students they knew were not attending either school in order to receive state tuition reimbursement.

”The members of the conspiracy falsely claimed thousands of students were enrolled even though those students were not attending classes or receiving services,” Zachary Myers, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana, said.

The court documents state that the school did not unenroll students even if they were inactive, and reportedly pushed incomplete student applications through the enrollment process, both of which increased the enrollment numbers. This included students who had dropped out or those who never completed their application process, as well as students who never logged in for classes. It also included students who never knew they were reenrolled….

The two schools reportedly paid the state funds to fraudulent for-profit companies, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Indiana claims. The companies were reportedly controlled and/or operated by Stoughton and the money was funneled through the companies to pay millions of dollars to Stoughton, Clark, King and others.

Myers said the defendants used the funds to purchase vehicles and boats, as well as pay for private school tuition. 

Herbert Stapleton, a special agent in charge with the FBI in Indianapolis, said that the cooperation with other agencies, including the State Board of Accounts in Indiana, was integral in starting this investigation and uncovering the potential fraud. 

Stapleton said that this case was “extremely complex,” including hundreds of thousands of records potentially relevant to the case that were analyzed and categorized. This included hundreds of interviews with fraudulently enrolled students and their parents, including an interview with parents whose student died but was still fraudulently enrolled at the school.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Fraud, Indiana, Virtual Charter Schools
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