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Tom Ultican: “Learning Loss” Bunkum, Debunked

By dianeravitch
March 14, 2024 //
5

Tom Ultican left private industry to teach physics and advanced mathematics in San Diego public schools. He has become a specialist in dissecting phony attacks on public schools. In this excellent post, he takes a look at “learning loss,” a favorite subject of reformers. Of course, students did not learn as much during the pandemic as they would have if they were in classrooms daily. It was hardly surprising that in the wake of a once-in-a-century worldwide health crisis, students’ lives were disrupted.

Ultican writes:

Crazy pants Eric Hanushek claims COVID “learning-loss” could cost American students $31 trillion in future earnings. He burst onto the education world’s conscientiousness with his 1981 paper, claiming “there is no relationship between expenditures and the achievement of students and that such traditional remedies as reducing class sizes or hiring better trained teachers are unlikely to improve matters.” This played well with billionaires from the Walton family but had no relationship with reality. Likewise, his January 2024 “learning-loss” claims were straight up baloney.

Learning-Loss Reality

In the summer and fall of 2020, NWEA, McKinsey, CREDO and others produced unfounded analysis of looming learning-loss disaster caused by school closures. Since there was no data, summer learning-loss was used as a proxy, a bad one. In 2019, Paul von Hippel’s investigation threw great doubt on the 1982 Baltimore study that powerfully supported summer learning-loss belief. He showed using modern testing analysis, learning-loss was doubtful and in some cases, students gained during the summer. This data, used to trumpet a national education crisis, had no validity.

Unfortunately, billionaire-financed organizations, out to undermine public schools, do not care.

From March 2020 to February 2021, almost a half-million people died of COVID-19. There were no vaccines or Paxlovid type drugs. Refrigerator trucks stored dead bodies and more than 2 million Americans were hospitalized, some on ventilators for months. Schools were closed; unemployment jumped to 15%, murder rates shot up by 30% and fear was rampant.

In this environment, teachers heroically switched to online education.

K-12 students lost parents, became isolated from friends and visited family members in hospitals. Many kids struggled with online classes over inadequate internet feeds, parents were losing jobs and children could not visit grandparents.

Of course the rates of learning decreased but less than one might expect.

NEAP Data Explorer Graphs

The National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) 8th grade data graphs above show a modest decrease in both math and reading scores between 2019 and 2022. Reading fell by three points and math by eight points on a 500 point scale. I do not see catastrophe in these declines because given the context of the pandemic they strike me as rather small, with no signs of pending economic collapse.

Students have been out of school for months with medical or other reasons. I and others with this experience can testify that we were able to recover quickly. Claiming learning-loss disaster from COVID shutdown does not make sense.

Another interesting result from the 2022 NAEP test data comes from Commissioner Peggy Carr of the National Center for Education Statistics. She said, “There’s nothing in this data that tells us there is a measurable difference in the performance between states and districts based solely on how long schools were closed.”

To add further weight, New York Times opinion writer David Wallace-Wells wrote:

“In New York City, the nation’s largest school district, schools reopened in September 2020. There, average scores for reading fell by about a point for fourth graders and improved by about a point for eighth graders; in math, fourth-grade scores fell by nine points (statewide scores fell by 12) and eighth-grade scores fell by four points (statewide scores fell by six). In Los Angeles, the second-largest district, schools stayed closed through January 2021. There, average scores actually improved in fourth-grade reading, eighth-grade math and eighth-grade reading, where they improved by a robust nine points (to 257 from 248). Scores fell only in fourth-grade math (to 220 from 224).”

This January, the New York Times interactive posted “Students Are Making a ‘Surprising’ Rebound From Pandemic Closures”, based on a joint project from Stanford and Harvard Universities. The executive summary states:

“Despite the lack of improvement during 2022-23 on assessments provided by NWEA and Curriculum Associates, we find that student achievement did improve between Spring 2022 and Spring 2023: in fact, students recovered approximately one-third of the original loss in math (0.17 grade levels out of the 0.53 grade levels decline from 2019-2022) and one quarter of the loss in reading (0.08 grade levels out of the 0.31 grade level decline from 2019-2022). Such improvements in grade levels in a single school year mean that students learned 117 percent in math and 108 percent in reading of what they would typically have learned in a pre-pandemic school year. These gains are large relative to historical changes in math and reading achievement on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.”

George Bush’s Secretary of Education, Margaret Spelling, says, “We’re slowly recovering, but not fast enough.” That is from the woman who claimed 100% of America’s students would be above average by 2014. Without being a statistician, it never rang true to me. Her failure to recognize the great work of public schools says she has an agenda…

Learning-loss is not the big danger facing America’s students. The real danger is the likes of McKinsey, NWEA, CREDO and research leaders like Eric Hanushek.

Categories Education Industry

Jan Resseger: The Stupidity of Ranking and Rating Schools by Test Scores

By dianeravitch
March 13, 2024 //
17

Jan Resseger writes here about the failure of ranking and rating schools by test scores and other metrics. These rankings cause parents to flee low-rated schools, making them even more segregated by income and race. If “reformers” intended to help struggling schools, they didn’t. They made it harder for those schools to improve.

She writes:

Here is the lead in a story in the Washington City Paper (Washington, D.C.) that describes not only  how public school ratings and rankings work in the nation’s capital but also their impact in every public school district in the United States.  Read this carefully:

“Before the pandemic shut down D.C. schools, each public school, like each student, got a report card. Every fall the school report card included a STAR rating, from one through five. The rating was based on a formula designed and used by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE), D.C.’s education agency. Federal law requires OSSE to identify the ‘bottom 5 percent’ of District schools, so that they can receive additional funding. In effect, OSSE’s STAR Framework ratings used a measurement of need to indicate a measurement of quality.  And as a measurement of quality, the formula failed.” (Emphasis is mine.)

The author of the commentary is Ruth Wattenberg, who formerly served on the Washington, D.C. State Board of Education (SBOE). She explains that the 2015 federal education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act—the version that replaced the 2002, No Child Left Behind Act—requires all states to assign school ratings which are said to be a measure of need for the bottom 5 percent of “struggling” schools. However, in a place like Washington, D.C. with universal school choice, while ESSA requires states to rate schools to target the bottom scorers for improvement, parents use the ratings as an advertisement for the best schools in the system—perhaps the only evidence some parents consider as they choose a school for their children.

The ratings are always understood by the general public as a measure of school quality.

In a large city school district, when parents choose a school according to the ratings, these measures help resegregate the school district by income and race. Wattenberg explains: “In D.C., where families can choose to send their kids to any public school in the district, this flawed rating system is especially consequential. ‘Many kids have left their neighborhood schools’ because of the ratings, says Sheila Carr… grandparent of current D.C. students… A small exodus can trigger budget, staffing, and program cuts that have the potential to drive more families away from a particular school, triggering yet more cuts.  A decade ago Carr remembers, this meant multiple school closings. Although DCPS (D.C. Public Schools) has avoided more closures recently, enrollments at some schools are way down. Anacostia High School enrolls just 287 students.”

Across metropolitan areas where numerous suburban school districts surround the central city, the ratings redline the poorer and most segregated school districts and encourage anybody who can afford it to seek the the school districts with the highest ratings: the homogeneously white and wealthy exurban school districts.

Across the states, legislatures and departments of education have developed their own rating systems to comply with the federal mandate, but these systems almost always feature each district’s aggregate standardized test scores, which have been documented to reflect primarily family income.  Wattenberg explains the research she and her colleagues explored as they set out to redesign their rating system: “One expert showed us how high-poverty schools disproportionately got low ratings, even when test scores reported that their students had learned more than average. Education researcher and D.C. public school parent Betsy Wolf concluded that ‘our accountability system measures family income more than it measures school quality.’ Based on these findings, the SBOE resolved in 2022 that the rating system was ‘fundamentally flawed’ and recommended eliminating it… Education and poverty expert Sean Reardon says that average test scores ‘are the results of all the opportunities kids have had to learn their whole lives, at home, in the neighborhood, in preschool and in the school year.  So it’s misleading to attribute average test scores solely to the school where they take the test.’”

Apparently in Washington, D.C. the board came up with a new system that is not likely to be much better: “At the SBOE’s early January meeting, some parents’ hopes of pushing to revamp the report cards faded. OSSE surfaced its new report card, and, instead of labeling schools with stars, the new proposal assigns each school a number, one to 100, called an ‘accountability score.’ The number will still be highlighted on each school’s online profile and on the central School Report Card, where it will be among the first and primary impressions of a school that parents will see.  The formula that produces the new accountability score, while slightly revised and less toxic, is still biased against low-income schools. It is still the same formula OSSE uses to identify the neediest schools for the U.S. Department of Education.”

Wattenberg adds: “Less biased data on school quality measures educational practices and conditions known to promote student learning, such as teacher retention and the extent to which a school offers instruction on a variety of subjects, including social studies, science, and the arts, rather than an overly narrow focus on math and reading (which is what end-of-year tests focus on). Survey data showing student perceptions, such as the extent to which students feel academically challenged and supported is also an effective metric.”

From a parent’s point of view, the new summative grade tells no more about the teachers or the curriculum or students’ experiences at school.  It is really no different than the five star rating system Wattenberg remembers in Washington, D.C.’s previous system.  Here in Ohio, where I live, we have a five star system, which is no better than the A, B, C, D, F system we had before we got the new five stars.  In Washington, DC,  the new 1-100 rating number Wattenberg describes being earned by each school will only cue up competative parents to go for the highest rated schools in a giant competition. Most people choosing a school on the basis of the ratings will not be able to discern how the metric balances all the variables in each school or whether the rating really say anything about what is happening at the school.

Having attended school in a small Montana town, where we all went to the same middle school and high school, and having parented two children who attended our neighborhood elementary and middle school and came together at our community’s only high school here in a Cleveland, Ohio inner suburb, I prefer the old and more radical solution to the whole problem of school choice driven by metrics published in the newspaper or school report cards. In fact, for the majority of families in the United States, neighborhood schools are still the norm. A system of neighborhood schools embodies the idea that parents’ responsibility is to help their children embrace the opportunities at the school where they are assigned.

As parents when my children were in elementary school, we used the PTA meetings as places to strategize about how we could better support innovations and special programs to make school more fun and challenging for all the students.  A district-wide school support agency in our community provides a tutoring program for students who need extra help, and there is a community supported, district-wide music camp for a week in June when the high school orchestra director and his staff, along with a raft of graduates from the high school music program, help students from across the middle schools to prepare for joining the high school band and orchestra.  People from across the school district turn out for the concert that culminates the summer music camp.

This kind of community involvement connects parents with the community’s public schools in a qualitative way.  When people engage personally with a school, the teachers and the students, parents can learn so much more about a school than any metric can expose.

At the very least, it is time for the U.S. Department of Education to stop demanding that states rate and rank their public schools.  Wattenberg is correct that the ratings—a measurement of need—are misinterpreted by the press and misunderstood by the public as a measurement of quality.

Categories Accountability, Competition, Disruption, District of Columbia, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Equity, Ethics, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Obama, School Choice, Segregation

Houston Chronicle Editorial: Greg Abbott is the Captain Ahab of Texas

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2024 //
18

The Houston Chronicle’s editorial board excoriated Texas Governor Greg Abbott for making war on Republican legislators who opposed Abbott’s voucher proposal, and at the same time failing to meet his constitutional obligation to fund public schools.

The editorial board wrote:

Our own Captain Ahab, otherwise known as Gov. Greg Abbott, managed to plunge his harpoon into the belly of the great whale last week. After Super Tuesday, our public-school leviathan lists but is not dead yet. 

The captain’s uber-wealthy allies — lWest Texas oilmen who are avowed Christian nationalists — must be giving thanks to God for Super Tuesday’s results and preparing for the death blow the next time the Texas Legislature meets. In 2022, they funded Abbott’s primary opponent and now their obsession with school vouchers has become the governor’s. 

The aim of these “tycoon evangelicals” — to borrow Bekah McNeel’s label, writing in Texas Monthly — is to get their grappling hooks into our public schools, bleed them out and redirect public resources into private Christian education. So what if our hemorrhaging public school system washes ashore, a blanched skeleton left to the screeching gulls? As long as West Texas billionaires Tim Dunn of Midlandand the Wilks brothers from Cisco are for knocking down the wall — the one between church and state, that is, not the border between Texas and Mexico — how could their agent in the governor’s office be against it?

Abbott is more than halfway there already. Vowing revenge on members of his own party who helped deep-six school vouchers last fall, he relied on a $6 million donation from a Philadelphia billionaire, as well as overlapping donations from Dunn and Wilks, to knock off nine mostly rural representatives of his own party who opposed his obsession. More were forced into a runoff. Based on votes for the House voucher bill during multiple special sessions last fall, he needed to pick up 11 pro-voucher votes. The captain’s likely to reach his ocean’s 11 in the November general election.

“Republican primary voters have once again sent an unmistakable message that parents deserve the freedom to choose the best education pathway for their child,” Abbott said in a statement Tuesday evening. “We will continue to help true conservative candidates on the ballot who stand with the majority of their constituents in supporting education freedom for every Texas family.”

You’ll forgive dedicated public school teachers and administrators, as well as parents of school-age children, if they forgo standing. While Abbott exults, schools around the state — large and small, urban and rural — are grappling with massive budget deficits, thanks to Abbott’s voucher obsession and a Legislature diverted during four sessions last year from meeting its constitutional obligation to adequately fund public schools. 

Remember January of last year? Lawmakers convened in Austin for their regular session almost giddy with the prospect of writing the 2024-25 state budget with an astounding cash balance to work with of $33 billion. They staggered home nearly a year later, having for the most part stiffed the school children of Texas (and by extension, the state as a whole). Rather than using that massive surplus to increase base-level funding, they approved $18 billion in property tax cuts. Meanwhile, school districts were left to grapple with inflation, the loss of federal funding designed to help schools weather the COVID-19 pandemic and no new monies to increase teacher pay, hire additional teachers and make needed investments. 

Nearly every school district in Harris County is underfunded and in crisis, a recent Kinder Institute study determined. Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, for example, is facing a budget shortfall of $73.6 million. For Spring ISD, the budget gap is an estimated $25 million. Spring Branch ISD announced recently that it plans to close two schools and charter programs in the face of a $35 million budget deficit.

Meanwhile, lawmakers continued their streak of penury last year: The last time they increased education funding was in 2019. 

They had the best of intentions, it seems, setting aside nearly $4 billion for public education, but those dollars were never allocated. The school finance bill passed by the House ended up in the drink when the Senate added Abbott’s (and the tycoon evangelicals’) voucher scheme, a scheme that would benefit a relative handful of students around the state (and practically none in rural and small-town Texas).

To be clear, school choice or vouchers or education savings accounts — whatever the label of choice — is a legitimate policy issue. It deserves vigorous debate. But we’ve had that debate. Abbott lost on the merits. Wide-scale voucher programs in other states, such as Arkansas, have failed to produce strong academic improvements while draining public schools of funding.

What’s disturbing about the governor’s voucher obsession is his naked obeisance to wealthy special interests who manifestly do not have the best interests of the people of Texas at heart. Their ultimate aim, even if it’s not necessarily the governor’s, is to transform Texas into a Christian-dominated, biblically based state. Those 21 House Republicans who joined with 63 Democrats to block last year’s voucher proposal understood who benefited and who didn’t. And on Tuesday, many paid the political price. It’s of little consolation, we realize, but we salute their courage. 

There will come a time when Texans have had enough of the mean-spiritedness and ideological narrowness of the current governor and his far-right cohorts, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney Gen. Ken Paxton. There will come a time when they demand more from their elected public servants (emphasis on servants). 

Given our long history with Abbott, it’s hard to imagine that other states do have elected governors, Republicans and Democrats, who acknowledge that they represent every citizen of their state, not only those who voted for them, who seek to unite not divide. In the words of New York Times columnist Frank Bruni, “they focus intently on the practical instead of the philosophical, emphasizing issues of broad relevance and not venturing needlessly onto the most divisive terrain.” 

Bruni was writing about Democratic governors, among them Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Gretchen “fix the damn roads” Whitmer of Michigan, but the inclination toward moderation and practicality describes a handful of Republican governors, as well. Phil Scott of Vermont and Spencer Cox of Utah come to mind. 

Of course, that’s not Texas — not today’s Texas, that is. Our obsessive Ahab remains at the helm, steering ever more to the starboard, ignoring the risk to his fellow Texans that he’ll one day run aground. We can do better.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Education Industry, Elections, Supporting public schools, Texas, Vouchers

John Thompson: The Failure of “Fixing” Schools by Closing Them

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2024 //
10

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, explains what happened when “reformers,” led by Secretary of Educatuon Arne Duncan, advocated for school closures.

He writes:

When non-educators watch Abbott Elementary, the television comedy, they are likely to find it hilarious, but I suspect it takes a teacher to fully understand the accuracy of its portrayal of the weird corporate reforms imposed on Philadelphia schools. But, recent research helps explain why many of even the most fervent advocates for test-driven, competition-driven school turnarounds now acknowledge their failures (even though they don’t apologize for them.).

The third-year premiere of Abbott gave a shout out to the respected journal, Chalkbeat. And, Chalkbeat is again reporting on failed turnarounds in Philadelphia, Tennessee, and elsewhere, as well as why former supporters of school takeovers are repudiating the reward-and-punish method for rapid, transformative change.

Chalkbeat analyzed the Philadelphia mandate, the 2010 Renaissance Initiative. It “strove to turn around about 10% of Philadelphia’s low-performing district schools by ceding them to charter organizations that promised to do better.” By 2023, however, “the Renaissance charter schools as a group mostly performed worse in standardized tests for elementary and middle schoolers than the district averages.”

Donna Cooper, executive director of Children First explained, “The goal was to prove that charters would work with any kid, not just about parents who were highly motivated to enter a lottery, and to show that a neighborhood school turned over to a charter organization would do better than if run by the school district.” But, “As far as I can tell, the data didn’t result in that.”

Similarly, “Chris McGinley, who served on both the School Reform Commission that oversaw the district while it was under state control and the Board of Education,” said “‘It was a bad idea poorly implemented.’”

Chalkbeat quoted a second-grade teacher who said, “All the disruption was even more unsettling for her students, … many of whom have already had to deal with trauma in their lives. The staff turnover, she feared, reinforced feelings that adults weren’t there for them.” And a Renaissance principal now says, “He is not a fan of charter conversion as a school reform strategy.” “‘I think it’s offensive … ‘A lot of these measures were experimenting with communities of color.”’

According to the Chalkbeat analysis, “these schools started out well below district and state averages in English Language Arts and math performance,” but “none of the schools are performing particularly well today. For instance, one charter school’s “achievement scores have remained persistently low;” its “math proficiency is at 1%.” 

Next, Chalkbeat told the story of the “high hopes, hard lessons” of Tennessee’s winning federal Race to the Top grant application.” It recalled:

Unlike incremental academic gains associated with school improvement, school turnaround calls for dramatic gains in a short period of time.

But overall, the district has not improved student outcomes, has struggled to retain teachers, and failed to catapult schools out of Tennessee’s bottom 5% as promised. 

It explained “Other takeaways include the importance of giving families an early seat at the table when making changes and seeking more collaboration among state and local officials throughout the process.” And, because of “its heavy-handed takeover of neighborhood schools and broken promises on performance, the ASD also hasn’t endeared itself to a city with a highly charged racial history.”

The quotes from Tennessee’s Achievement School District (ASD) superintendent Chris Barbic were especially important. I’ve long been frustrated by the refusal of true-believers like Barbic who ignored the research which explained why those turnarounds were likely to fail. But Barbic says that “18 months in as he sat in a classroom and [he] saw the ASD’s systems weren’t working.”

Barbic told Chalkbeat, “’The way the ASD was set up, it had a lot more sticks than carrots.’” Moreover, “while the state-run district was positioned to act quickly, Barbic acknowledged ‘we were probably too aggressive on the sticks and not thinking about what other options there were besides doing nothing, using charters, or running the schools ourselves.’” He then “acknowledged that, ‘building grassroots support and collaborating with partners over time is ultimately more effective,’” and “’We’re in a world today where top-down just doesn’t work.’”

These massively funded bets on rapid turnarounds were based on the corporate reform hypothesis that creative destruction would lead to transformational improvements that could be scaled up. It earned the ridicule of Abbott Elementary, students, educators, and researchers. It’s good that more corporate reform advocates are admitting that their experiment failed. But that doesn’t undo the chaos which resulted in serious harm to the students it sought to help.

Today, however, the MAGA crowd is sowing discord and mistrust for political reasons. Extremists like Oklahoma’s State Superintendent Ryan Walters are using the worst of their punitive tactics to spread hatred. They are disrupting schools and other institutions in order to reelect Donald Trump. The rightwing seeks to burn down the barn without having any interest in rebuilding it. Their assault on public education is just one of their weapons for undermining democracy.

So, the history documented by Chalkbeat and satirized by Abbott Elementary is especially important today. It’s time to clearly spread the word about the inherent dangers of massive school closures and other punitive measures regardless of whether its goal is creative disruption, or disruption as a tool for destruction.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Oklahoma, Tennessee

Vouchers Fuel Revival of Religious Schools

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2024 //
109

The adoption of voucher programs has been a boon for religious schools. Schools that were financially troubled are now thriving with public subsidies for their students as well as an influx of new students.

This article by reporter Holly Meyer on the Associated Press newswire describes the good fortune of religious schools but does not mention the copious research demonstrating the failure of vouchers.

The Miami Archdiocese’s superintendent of schools says Catholic education is increasingly in demand in South Florida, now that all K-12 students regardless of income are allowed to use taxpayer-funded programs to pay for private school tuition.

Against the backdrop of favorable decisions by the conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court, Florida was among nine states that expanded school voucher programs last year. So many families have signed up for the taxpayer-funded tuition reimbursements, some states are already exceeding their budgets….

The movement gained momentum amid fallout from pandemic-era school restrictions, debates on how transgender students should participate in school life, and wars over books and curriculum related to race and LGBTQ+ issues….

Some long-running religious schools are now planning for a fuller future after the wave of policy wins for the so-called school choice movement. Others hope voucher expansion comes to their state.

“We are moving into growth mode,” said Jim Rigg, superintendent of the Miami Archdiocese’s 64 schools. Accelerated by the state’s private school scholarship program, enrollment has risen for the last four years, reaching its highest peak in over a decade, he said….

Nearly 80% of private school families choose religious ones, according to P. George Tryfiates, public policy and legal affairs vice president for the Association of Christian Schools International. The association represents about 2,200 U.S. schools.

In a statement, he said Christian schools are, among other things, “a refuge from the cultural wars over sexuality.”

Voucher programs do not include accountability measures nor do they ban discrimination. Religious Scholls are not required to comply with federal laws so they may ban students with disabilities and students of religions different from the sponsor.

Most vouchers are used by students already enrolled in religious schools.

The voucher movement is a not subtle way of gutting civil rights protections.

Categories Bigotry, Civil Rights, Education Industry, Failure, Funding, Miami, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Scandal in Texas: IDEA Charter Schools Placed Under Conservatorship

By dianeravitch
March 7, 2024 //
19

IDEA, the largest charter chain in Texas, was just placed under conservatorship by the state education agency because of ongoing financial transgressions, self-dealing and conflicts of interest.

The state of Texas gave more than $800 million last year to IDEA. The federal Charter Schools Program—which is rank with waste, fraud, and abuse—has gifted IDEA with $300 million. It was a favorite of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.

For years, both the state and the U.S. Department of Education have been aware of IDEA’s profligate spending. This is the charter chain that wanted to lease a 6-passenger private jet for $15 million for its executives. This is the chain that bought luxury box seats for the San Antonio Spurs basketball games. This is the chain that gave its founder a golden parachute of $900,000 when financial abuses forced him out.

When there is so much that is fraudulent in the chain’s spending, can you trust its reports about enrollment, grades, test scores, and graduation rates? Business leaders in San Antonio saw IDEA as a great replacement for public schools. They were hoodwinked.

The Texas Tribune reported:

Texas’ largest charter school network has been placed under conservatorship by the Texas Education Agency after a years-long investigation into improper spending within the system of 143 schools.

The arrangement, announced Wednesday, is part of a settlement agreement between IDEA Public Schools and the TEA. IDEA had been under investigation since 2021 following numerous allegations of financial and operational misconduct.

It was revealed that IDEA officials used public dollars to purchase luxury driver services as well as $15 million to lease a private jet, just two weeks after promising TEA it would be “strictly enforcing” new fiscal responsibility policies put in place in response to ongoing investigations, as reported by San Antonio Express-News.

The revelations led the district to conduct an internal investigation, resulting in the firing of JoAnn Gama, former superintendent and co-founder of IDEA. Gama later filed a lawsuit against IDEA claiming wrongful termination. IDEA came to a $475,000 settlement with Gama in January. This followed co-founder and CEO Tom Torkelson’s departure in 2020; he was given a $900,000 severance package.

The charter school district serves about 80,000 students in K-12. The schools are independently run but publicly funded with state dollars, having received about $821 million in state funding in 2023-2024 school year.

Under conservatorship, the conservators will have the authority to oversee and direct any action of the district, facilitate a needs assessment, conduct onsite inspections and support the creation of a plan to address corrective action concerns. They will also report back to the agency regarding the district’s progress in completing necessary corrective activities.

The conservators will not fully take over the governance of the district. But if the district doesn’t make the necessary corrective measures that the conservators outline for them, a takeover could be possible in the future…

The news follows the TEA takeover of Houston Independent School District in June following years of poor academic performance at a single campus within the district, among other factors.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Fraud, Funding, Texas

Texas: This Rural Republican Was Ousted by Governor Abbott Because He Opposed Vouchers

By dianeravitch
March 7, 2024 //
15

Glenn Rogers is a veterinarian and a rancher who lives in Graford, Texas. In addition to his duties as a vet and a rancher, he served on the school board of the Graham Independent School District. He was elected to represent District 60 in the Texas Legislature in 2021. He is a conservative, and he tries to represent his rural constituents faithfully. They don’t want vouchers. They want more funding for their local public schools and higher salaries for their teachers. People know their teachers. The teachers know their students and their families. The public schools are important for the local economy. The tradition of Friday night high school football games unifies the community; it’s known as “Friday night lights.”

When Representative Rogers voted against vouchers along with other rural Republicans, Governor Abbott unleashed an advertising blitz against them. The ads accused them of being “weak on security,” which was a lie. Money from billionaires poured into the district to smear Rep. Rogers. He lost.

Rep. Rogers released this statement, which was published in The Weatherford Democrat:

“I’ll Wear No Man’s Collar”

-Davy Crockett

First, I want to thank my supporters, those who voted for me and those who supported me prayerfully, financially, and in so many other ways. It has been the greatest honor to serve this district.

The corruption that exists at the highest level of Texas state government would have made Governor “Pa” Ferguson blush.

Governor Greg Abbott has defiled the Office of Governor by creating and repeating blatant lies about me and my House colleagues, those who took a stand for our public schools. I stood by the Governor on all his legislative priorities but just one, school vouchers. For just one disagreement, and for a $6 million check from Jeff Yass, a Pennsylvanian TikTok investor, and voucher vendor, Abbott went scorched earth against rural Texas and the Representatives who did their jobs-representing their districts.

My tenure in the Texas House included two general sessions, seven special sessions, redistricting, Covid, winter storm Uri, a Democrat quorum break, expulsion of a House member and the impeachment of Ken Paxton. It also includes a litany of conservative victories that made Texas safer, reigned in out-of-control government bureaucracy, lessened what had become a crushing tax burden on our families and businesses, and fostered economic growth.

I am not a good politician. I am just a Texas rancher who wanted to make a difference in my community. Who knew this simple mission would have resulted in three brutal campaigns?

Throughout my three campaigns, because of my unwillingness to be compliant with the two billionaire, “Christian” Nationalist, power brokers that run this state, I have been unmercifully slandered through the politics of unwarranted personal destruction on social media, radio, post mail, streaming sites, and cable television.

In my first race the opposition was the Wilks, Tim Dunn, Empower Texans, and the entire enterprise of dozens of PACs and “non-profits” they financed. The race ended in a hard fought Covid-delayed runoff victory against Farris Wilks’ son-in-law.

In my second race, my opposition was Wilks and Dunn, Empower Texans (rebranded to Defend Texas Liberty), and the Voucher Lobby, including the American Federation for Children and the School Freedom Fund (based in Virginia). In that race, we dealt with a runoff and an expensive, unnecessary recount.

In my third race the opposition was all the above, but now included a rebranded Defend Texas Liberty (Texans United for a Conservative Majority), vastly greater money from the Voucher Lobby, and Governor Greg Abbott.

This time the millions of dollars spent spreading lies about my record and the non-stop false impugning of my integrity were just too much to overcome. The real losers in this race are:

1) Texas public schools;

2) Rural Texas; and

3) Representative Government.

This morning, I have no regrets. I believe in the words of Sam Houston, “Do right and risk the consequences.”

History will prove Ken Paxton is a corrupt, sophisticated criminal. History will prove vouchers are simply an expensive entitlement program for the wealthy and a get rich scheme for voucher vendors. History will prove Governor Greg Abbott is a liar.

History will prove that our current state government is the most corrupt ever and is “bought” by a few radical dominionist billionaires seeking to destroy public education, privatize our public schools and create a Theocracy that is both un-American and un-Texan.

May God save Texas!

[Editors Note: the Wilks brothers and Tim Dunn are oil-and-gas billionaires who are evangelical Christians; they want vouchers, and they use their money to control state government. Ken Paxton is the State Attorney General who was impeached by the Texas House of Teprrsentatibes on multiple charges of corruption, based on whistleblower reports from his own staff. After Paxton’s billionaire friends came to the rescue, giving a campaign contribution of $2 million to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who conducted the trial in the Srnate, Paxton was acquitted. In this week’s election, Attorney General Paxton and his wealthy friends ousted legislators and judges who tried to hold him accountable.]

Categories Billionaires, Courage, Dark Money, Education Industry, Elections, Resistance, Rural Schools, Separation of church and state, Supporting public schools, Texas

Jan Resseger: Vouchers in Ohio Benefit the Affluent

By dianeravitch
March 7, 2024 //
4

Jan Resseger reports that the wild expansion of vouchers in Ohio has worked as predicted: they confer public money on students who already attend private and religious schools. They do not benefit children who are poor. The claim that they would “help poor children escape failing schools” was a hoax.

Maybe voucher advocates believed it thirty years ago, when no one knew how vouchers would work. But now we know. The evidence from every state with vouchers shows the same result: the overwhelming majority of vouchers are used by students who never attended public schools. The more states expand vouchers, the more they subsidize affluent families. And the poor kids who take vouchers fall behind their peers in public schools.

She writes:

The Cleveland Plain Dealer placed Laura Hancock’s expose about Ohio’s wildly expanded school voucher program on the front page above the fold in Sunday’s paper. It is good to see this dangerous threat to public schooling—inserted into the state budget with minimal public discussion—receiving the attention it deserves.

Hancock’s message? Ohio isn’t helping poor kids in public schools, the original promise of Ohio’s first voucher program in Cleveland in the 1990s. Instead, the new vouchers are a gift to middle income and wealthy families whose children are already enrolled in private and parochial schools:

“The number of Cuyahoga County students (students in greater Cleveland) receiving state-funded scholarships to attend private schools has skyrocketed this year after state lawmakers expanded a voucher program, but state data suggests that doesn’t necessarily mean more kids have opted out of public schools. Across the county’s 31 districts, the number of students receiving tuition payments in the EdChoice-Expansion scholarship… has increased nearly four-fold, from 2,500 students last year to nearly 9,200 this year. Those districts, however, have not seen a corresponding loss in student population, indicating that most of the families newly benefiting from the vouchers were already enrolled in private schools rather than fleeing a school district.”

Hancock profiles, for example, three of Cleveland’s middle and upper income suburbs where the vouchers now serve as a tuition-reimbursement entitlement for families of students already paying private school tuition: “Enrollment in Rocky River City School District fell by just 22 students between last year and this year, even though the number of kids receiving vouchers shot up from 16 to 309. In Bay Village City School District, there are 30 fewer students despite a voucher jump from 13 to 229. Westlake City School District has 19 fewer students; vouchers in the district spiked from 41 to 581.”

Hancock lists the ten Ohio public school districts with the largest growth in students accepting a voucher under Ohio’s huge expansion of school vouchers this year.  Three are exurbs of Cleveland; one is a shared exurb of Cleveland and Akron; one is an exurb of Akron; one is an exurb of Columbus, and four are exurbs of Cincinnati. In every one of these districts, according to data from the Ohio Department of Education, the median income is far above the state’s median of $41,132.59. In Indian Hill, a Cincinnati suburb, the median income is $96,508.50. Median income in Hudson, part of suburban Cleveland and Akron, is $82,183.00, and in Olentangy, a Columbus exurb, median income is $79,892.50.

Why are the ten school districts with so many students taking vouchers for the first time all wealthy suburbs? Hancock explains: “because the legislature… removed income eligibility caps for EdChoice-Expansion. Last year, the cap was 250% of the federal poverty level for a scholarship, or $75,000 for a family of four. Now there are no income caps, although families only get partial scholarships when they earn above 450% of the poverty level, or above $135,000 for a family of four.”

Hancock adds that the state is giving away a whole lot of money in each voucher: $6,167 for grades K-8 and $8,407 for grades 9-12. Thomas S. Poetter, a professor at Miami University of Ohio, who recently edited the new Vouch for This!, adds that the vouchers are worth more than the state school funding formula has established as the base cost public schools are expected to spend per student—the amount that includes the state and local contributions required by the school funding formula. Poetter writes: “(T)he fact remains that the state will be spending more per pupil on individual children in private high schools with its voucher program… than it will for individual public school students across the state… That has been the case for nearly the entire life of the EdChoice ‘Scholarship’ program (it’s a voucher program) but it really hits home with the high figures coming at us in the new budget. And just think of all that could be done in our public schools to better our offerings… if we weren’t sending more than $1 billion a year into private hands to be used in ways that none of us would ever approve of in public education….” (Vouch for This!, pp. 130-131)

Hancock quotes Troy McIntosh from the Ohio Christian Education Network and the Center for Christian Virtue enthusing about the new voucher expansion. She quotes Senator Andy Brenner, Chair of the Ohio Senate Education Committee, explaining that families ought to get the vouchers because they are paying taxes and therefore ought to get a personal reward for their children. She adds that after the voucher expansion, “the Catholic Diocese of Columbus is looking to potentially build schools in areas that currently don’t have a Catholic school.”

Hancock’s article omits one urgently important issue with Ohio’s new voucher expansion: over half the state’s counties are rural and entirely lack a private school where students might potentially carry a voucher. The expansion of private school tuition vouchers will shift the distribution of money from the state’s school foundation budget away from the state’s rural school districts because private school tuition vouchers can be used only by students in areas where private schools exist—places with larger and more concentrated populations.  In a report last year for the Ohio League of Women Voters (You should scroll down and then download report.), Susan Kaeser explains: “Most of the public school population is concentrated in Ohio’s 8 largest urban counties, and so is the private school population. The 8 largest counties have 46% of the public school population and 71% of the private school students…  Public education is the only consistently available education choice in Ohio’s 46 small counties, those with less than 8,000 public school students… Private schools across these 46 counties serve a total of only about 7,000 students.” “Rural taxpayers underwrite private choice in the state—but not where they live.”

Hancock reminds readers that “over 130 public school districts… are suing the state over the constitutionality of the vouchers.”  Coincidentally on Sunday, the Plain Dealer also published a commentary by William Phillis, Executive Director of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding, which is a co-plaintiff with the public school districts in the Vouchers Hurt Ohio lawsuit.  Phillis provides the history, beginning in 1819, of Ohio’s efforts to establish and support public education.  Our system of public common schools, Phillis reminds us, is protected by the language of the 1851 Ohio Constitution in Article VI, section 2: “Convention delegates crafted language that required the legislature to secure, by taxation, a thorough and efficient system of common schools and clarified that religious sects or other sects shall not control any part of school funds of the state.”

The school voucher explosion for the wealthy that was slipped into Ohio’s FY 2024-2025 state budget last summer epitomizes what we were warned about last year in the conclusion to The School Voucher Illusion, edited by experts Kevin Welner, Gary Orfield, and Luis A. Huerta and published by the Teachers College Press: “As currently structured, voucher policies in the United States are unlikely to help the students they claim to support. Instead, these policies have often served as a facade for the far less popular reality of funding relatively advantaged (and largely White) families, many of whom already attended—or would attend—private schools without subsidies. Although vouchers are presented as helping parents choose schools, often the arrangements permit the private schools to do the choosing… Advocacy that began with a focus on equity must not become a justification for increasing inequity. Today’s voucher policies have, by design, created growing financial commitments of taxpayer money to serve a constituency of the relatively advantaged that is redefining their subsidies as rights—often in jurisdictions where neighborhood public schools do not have the resources they need.” (The School Voucher Illusion: Exposing the Pretense of Equity, p. 290)

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Extremism, Failure, Fraud, Funding, Hoax, Lies, Ohio, Religion, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Texas: Local Elections and the Fight Over Vouchers

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2024 //
4

Yesterday was a crucial election for the future of public schools in Texas. The Republican primaries pitted civic-minded Republicans against challengers committed to vouchers and endorsed by Governor Greg Abbott.

Abbott received the biggest single contribution in state history from Pennsylvania billionaire Jeff Yass. The gift came with a purpose: pass a voucher law.

Governor Abbott has been in charge since 2015 and until now, he never cared much about vouchers. But the money came pouring in from evangelical oil-and-gas billionaires like Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, as well as out-of-state billionaires like Yass and Betsy DeVos. Suddenly, vouchers was the Governor’s top priority. He toured Christian schools around the state to promote them.

When the vote came in the Legislature, a bloc of rural Republicans in the House opposed vouchers. They said their community loved their public schools; they didn’t want to undermine them. Their public schools are the heart of their community and their local economy.

Abbott offered new money for public schools and teacher pay raises, but only if the Legislature approved vouchers. The rural Republicans (and every Democrat) said no.

Abbott said he would call special sessions until the House passed a voucher bill and he did. He called four special sessions. They said no to vouchers. He threatened to run primaries against them and to replace them with legislators who supported vouchers. They stood firm.

Yesterday some of those rural Republicans were defeated by Abbott and about $100 million in billionaire money. Some prevailed. Some are in run-offs.

Pastor Charles Johnson of Pastors for Texas Children (PTC) is a stalwart friend of public schools. He and his network of pastors across the state understand the importance of well-funded public schools and well-paid teachers.

PTC just released this update on the Republican primaries.

https://www.pastorsfortexaschildren.com/

Election Results

Dear Friends,

We have mixed emotions as we reflect on last night’s outcomes of the Texas House of Representatives races. While we may not have achieved the sweeping results we had hoped for, we are grateful for the victories your work and witness achieved!

 

Of the 16 House Republican primary races we focused on, we enjoyed six victories and suffered six losses. Four of our Republican friends face runoff elections.


The path to positive change is often fraught with challenges, and setbacks are an inevitable part of any endeavor. Though we may not have won every race last night, we are grateful for the re-election of six of our strongest Republican allies in the House and look forward to working hard to re-elect four more in the runoffs.


We find hope and encouragement in the upcoming May runoffs. These runoffs are crucial to fighting taxpayer-funded vouchers here in Texas. We will continue to fight to ensure that the Texas Public Schools voice we advocate for is heard loud and clear. Your continued support is crucial, and together, we will forge a brighter future for the children of Texas.

We want to express our gratitude for your unwavering support throughout this journey. We remain steadfast in our commitment to championing our Texas public schools, teachers, parents, and, of course, the 5.5 million children in our Texas public schools.

 

Let us stand united, resilient in the face of these challenges, and hopeful for the positive outcomes that the runoffs may bring. The journey may be long, but with your dedication and support, we can make a lasting impact on the lives of children and families in our beloved community.


 

Rev. Charles Foster Johnson, Executive Director

Pastors for Children

Donate to PTC

Categories Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Funding, Rural Schools, Texas, Vouchers

Nebraska: Vouchers Will Be on the Ballot in November Unless Court Blocks Them

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2024 //
3

Nebraska will have a voucher referendum this fall unless courts keep them off the ballot. Friends of public schools gathered way more than enough signatures to get a state referendum. The top state election official certified that they met the qualifications.

But Republican leaders are desperate to kill the referendum because they know it will pass. NO VOUCHER REFERENDUM HAS EVER PASSED.

Nebraska’s top election official has ruled that voters will get to decide this year whether to repeal a law that gives taxpayer money for private school scholarships. 

But both Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen and state Sen. Lou Ann Linehan, who authored the school choice law and sought to have the repeal effort kept off the ballot, acknowledge that the courts will likely ultimately decide if the repeal question makes it onto November’s ballot.

Evnen said in a news release late Thursday that he consulted state law and previous state attorney general opinions before concluding that the referendum question is legal and will appear on the November ballot “unless otherwise ordered by a court of competent jurisdiction.”

Categories Democracy, Education Industry, Nebraska, Religion, Republicans, Rural Schools, Separation of church and state, Vouchers
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