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Kentucky: We Don’t Want Charter Vultures in Our State!

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2017 //
1

Gay Adelman of Save Our Schools Kentucky published the following letter to the editor in the Louisville Courier-Journal:

“Kentucky is one of only seven states that has managed to avoid jumping off the charter school cliff, so far. However, our state legislature is poised to pass a charter school bill this month. As a parent volunteer and staunch advocate for public schools, everyone keeps telling me I should “just deal with it.”

“If you knew what I knew about the real challenges our public schools face, some of the 100-plus other solutions we should try before opening our pocketbooks to outside interests, and the corruption and self-dealing going on behind this movement, you would not “just deal with it” either. You would fight until there was not an ounce of fight left, and then you would fight some more.

“Research shows that if Kentucky passes harmful charter school legislation this month, our already struggling schools and our most vulnerable students will suffer. Our democracy will suffer. All of the gains and momentum currently underway in our public schools will fall right off that cliff, as well.

“Charters are funded by our tax dollars meant for our public schools, but they are run by outside corporate interests and authorized by entities outside the purview of our democratically elected school board. By opening the door to charters, our already underfunded public schools will become destitute. They will end up serving the neediest of our population, begging for scraps, and exacerbating the extreme poverty, segregation and discrimination we already have in this city.

“Shameful agendas

“For some, charters are a dog whistle for those looking to resegregate schools, to discriminate against LGBTQ policies, to strip rights and services away from special needs students, and to bring religion into schools. Others see them as a way to isolate their children from students dealing with poverty, trauma and behavior issues.

“Paid pro-charter policymakers have been coming after our volunteers, attempting to convolute or discredit our concerns. Lawmakers, pushing out-of-touch education bills, have blocked their own constituents from commenting on their social media posts. Soccer moms, teachers and students are routinely ignored or bullied by grown men who often don’t even have experience (or kids) in the public school system.

“In actuality, Kentucky public schools are improving. But the oft-hailed idea that charters are a “lifeboat” implies that the system is sinking. Charter advocates would rather jump ship and save a few than plug the hole and save all. The charter lifeboats will only save those students whose parents know how to navigate the system (which are not the kids that charters purport to help) leaving the existing schools more broken than before.

“Charter schools are a slippery slope.

“Look at what’s happened in the 43 states, plus DC, where charter school operators have run amok. Like locusts, they ravage communities, taking their inexpensive-to-educate, high-performing students. Once they’ve locked their jaws onto our succulent recurring, AAA-rated tax dollars, they move on to their next most lucrative, vulnerable target. In a recent interview with Insider Louisville, House Bill 103’s sponsor Phil Moffett said,“The most likely areas that will see charter schools first are Owensboro, Bowling Green, as well as counties near Cincinnati, Lexington and Louisville.” They’re not even trying to hide it!

“Charter operators will find other ways to suck funds from our public schools, such as vouchers and online schools and multi-county “academies.” This leaves us, the taxpayers, to make up the funding difference and clean up the mess they leave behind.

“Charters don’t work, not even for “urban kids”

“Despite relentless propaganda and cherry-picked “research” financed by wealthy special interests, charter schools don’t produce better students. There is no statistically significant evidence that shows that charters improve outcomes for minority students. In fact, they have been known to hurt urban public schools, often preying on vulnerable, at-risk, low-advocacy students who are desperate for change. The NAACP, Black Lives Matter, and ACLU have recently spoken out against charter schools.

“Charters magnify the divide between the have’s and the have-not’s because students with involved parents – the ones who jump through hoops so their kid can attend a charter school – often outperform those who don’t, leaving the public schools in those communities worse off than before.

“Just look at Detroit. With the recent confirmation of the wholly unqualified, public education enemy, Betsy DeVos, to U.S. Secretary of Education, opposing charter school legislation in Kentucky has become more critical than ever. It may, in fact, be the only hope we still have and protecting our public schools from the devastation that has happened in districts like Detroit, where her failed policies have run rampant.

“Kentucky has been fortunate to be one of the few states to keep vulture charter operators at bay. Let’s not jump off the cliff just because everyone else did. Call your legislators at 800-372-7181 and tell them to #StopChartersInKY.”

Gay Adelmann is co-founder of a grassroots public education advocacy group called Save Our Schools Kentucky. She can be reached at moderator@saveourschoolsky.org.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Kentucky, Privatization, Resistance

Kentucky: House Passes Charter Bill, with Strong Limits

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2017 //
19

Now that Republicans control the Governorship and the Legislature in Kentucky, they finally got a billauthorizing privately run charters through the lower house of the legislature. Kentucky is one of the few states that does not allow charters, or has been until now. In the world of Republican politics, it is important not to be different. One must run with the crowd, even if they are running off a steep cliff. Republicans look enviously to their neighbor Tennessee, which has wasted millions of dollars on charters and performs well below Kentucky on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Why Kentucky wants to emulate a lower-performing state is anyone’s guess. Call them lemmings.

On Friday, the Kentucky House passed House Bill 520 after four hours of debate. The bill would legalize charter schools in the state of Kentucky.

Charter schools are publicly funded but privately run schools.

The bill was introduced in the General Assembly by Representative John Carney, a Republican from Campbellsville. While it does not set a cap on the number of schools, Carney said the state will likely start the program with three to five schools in areas that need them most.

The schools would be approved for five years and the reassessed and renewed for another five years or shut down.

“This should be a bipartisan matter. This is about our kids,” Carney said.

According to Hal Heiner, the Kentucky Education and Workforce Development’s Cabinet Secretary, students do not have proper support systems and that is causing schools to fail.

“We have to add to what we have to meet the needs of children” Hal Heiner, Kentucky Education and Workforce Development Cabinet Secretary said.”We need specialization.”

Heiner said a charter school, which had the ability to provide year-round education and three meals a day to students, can help underprivileged students.

Kentucky is one of seven states without charter school laws.

“Every dollar going to charter school is not going to a public school in that district.” Kentucky Education Association President Stephanie Winkler said. “This bill gives local school boards little room to maneuver.”

Even if a school board rejects an application, which the bill says it can’t do if the application is in order, an applicant can appeal to the state’s school board.

During the meeting, Rep. Phill Moffett (R – Jefferson) added a measure to give a mayor permission to accept a charter application as well.

“We’ve got to stop accepting this stuff and we need to work together to make sure we educate these children better,” Rep. Moffett, a longtime supporter of charter schools said.

Louisville pastor Milton Seymour said the bill helps end achievement gaps in low-end neighborhoods.

This is the civil rights movement of the 21st century,” Seymour said. “If we don’t do something for our children, then shame, shame, shame.”

Achievement gaps exist but charter schools are not the answer according to Winkler. Winkler continued her opposition to the bill by saying that all states with charter schools still have gaps.

“If charter schools were the answer to the student achievement gaps in this state, the professionals that trained to teach children would be advocating for them too,” Winkler said in an emotional speech.

While it is unfortunate to see Kentucky join the parade of failed school reforms by permitting privatization of public school funds, the one bright side is that the bill is very disappointing to corporate reformers. Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform, which has been touting privatization for many years, wrote up her criticism:

The lower house of the Kentucky legislature passed HB520 this afternoon, a bill which in all but isolated cases strengthens the hands of school districts to limit charter schooling in Kentucky.

Applicants wanting to open a charter school in the state will first have to get permission from the district, which experience shows is rarely given in the absence of a swift and binding appeal to the state board of education or multiple chartering authorizers.

While an amendment offered by Representative Phil Moffett adding the Mayors of Louisville and Lexington as authorizers improved the bill, other changes, including a provision barring charters from contracting with businesses to support and manage their schools, and barring online education, made it much worse.

The Kentucky Education Association president opposed even the dramatically scaled back version of the measure. As has been typical elsewhere, Kentucky school boards and superintendents have been lobbying hard against charter schools, and creating fear among rural legislators that charter schools would drain their school funding.

What? No for-profit management! No disastrous cyber charters! A few points of light in an otherwise dismal decision that will defund public schools in Kentucky and NOT help the kids who need excellent teachers and good public schools.

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

Watch the Great Debate: Are Charter Schools Overrated?

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2017 //
12

This is a fun debate to watch, sponsored by Intelligence Squared.

The proposition: Are Charter Schools Overrated?

The debaters:

For the proposition: Julian Vasquez Heilig and Gary Miron. They argue that charter schools are overrated.

Against the proposition: Jeanne Allen and Gerard Robinson. They argue that charter schools are great.

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

DFER Launches Phony Phone Campaign in DC to Promote Common Core and High-Stakes Testing

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2017 //
10

The hedge-fund manager group called Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) is conducting an aggressive telephone campaign in D.C. to promote the Common Core and high-stakes standardized testing. The rhetoric is deceptive, as usual.

Jeffrey Anderson writes in the Washington City Paper:

“In a one-party city with a civic focus on education, an advocacy group like Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) sounds as wholesome as Mom and apple pie. Everyone in D.C. is a Democrat, right? Who isn’t in favor of education reform?

“Aided by such safe assumptions, the New York-based PAC recently injected itself into a complicated school debate when it employed phone banking that connected D.C. residents with their respective school board members.

“Residents around the city received calls on behalf of DFER to tell them that the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) is proposing to “hold schools accountable not only for the academic achievement of students but also for the growth that students make on their achievement at whatever level they start out.”

“Sounds like a winner, right?

“The callers then offered to direct residents to their representative on the D.C. State Board of Education to “let them know you support this proposal.” They then asked, “May I put you through?”

“What the campaign does not tell citizens is that the proposal presents the school board with complex decisions in an ongoing policy debate that is central to a virtual culture war over public education reform in America.

“Nor does it disclose that Democrats for Education Reform is a PAC that raises money from corporations, foundations, and influential philanthropists to back political candidates who favor standardized testing and the Common Core standards—and apparently seeks to directly influence elected school board members on contentious policy issues.

***

“OSSE’s draft plan is based on the federal “Every Student Succeeds Act,” which requires states to create a new school accountability system beyond the standardized math and reading tests of “No Child Left Behind.” The idea of Every Student Succeeds is to provide states with flexibility to also measure performance in science, social science, art, and other indicators of school quality.

“Under the plan DFER is promoting, 80 percent of school accountability for elementary and middle schools is based on standardized tests in reading and math and a complex formula meant to determine student “growth.” (Most of the remainder is based on attendance and re-enrollment.) The accountability system not only rates schools relative to one another but also sets guidelines that will influence educational and administrative priorities.

“Proponents of the plan, such as DFER’s D.C. director Catharine Bellinger, believe that a school rating system should be based on single test scores that reflect performance on college and career-ready exams, such as the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC).”

Here is a safe bet: Not one member of the board of DFER sends their children to a school that is ranked by test scores or uses standardized tests to rank students.

Now that DeVos is leading the national movement for privatization, DFER can concentrate its energies on testing and ranking other people’s children.

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, District of Columbia, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing

Portland, Oregon: Leader from KIPP-TFA Runs for Portland Public School Board

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2017 //
5

In a hotly contested race, a former principal of a KIPP charter school is running for a seat on the Portland, Oregon, school board. The website of the candidate, Jamila Singleton Munson, does not mention her role in the KIPP corporate chain or the fact that she was chief of staff for Teach for America. Apparently she is still employed by TFA. TFA has a branch–Leaders for Educational Equity–that encourages and funds its personnel to run for office, as part of its plan to dominate state and local school boards.

Munson’s resume demonstrates she’s part of the country’s education-reform movement that generally supports school choice and charter schools as well as the use of test scores to measure acceptability for schools. Teachers unions generally oppose those approaches.

Steve Buel dropped out of the race. Rita Moore is the pro-public school candidate.

http://www.mooreforschools.com

Will Portland elect a public school advocate or an advocate for privatization of its public schools?

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, KIPP Charter Schools, Oregon, Privatization, Teach for America

Peter Dreier: Who Are the Plutocrats Trying to Oust Steve Zimmer?

By dianeravitch
March 3, 2017 //
6

Peter Dreier describes the full assault on Steve Zimmer by the plutocrats. They want control of the Los Angeles school district, and he is in their way. What is their goal? Privatization and profit.

Some of America’s most powerful corporate plutocrats want to take over the Los Angeles school system and Steve Zimmer, a former teacher and feisty school board member, is in their way. So they’ve hired Nick Melvoin to get rid of him. No, he’s not a hired assassin like the kind on The Sopranos. He’s a lawyer who the billionaires picked to defeat Zimmer.

As a result, the race for the District 4 seat — which stretches from the Westside to the West San Fernando Valley — is ground zero in this battle over the corporate take-over of public education. The outcome of next Tuesday’s (March 7) election has national implications in terms of the billionaires’ battle to reconstruct public education in the corporate mold.

The corporate big-wigs are part of an effort that they and the media misleadingly call “school reform.” What they’re really after is not “reform” (improving our schools for the sake of students) but “privatization” (business control of public education). They think public schools should be run like corporations, with teachers as compliant workers, students as products, and the school budget as a source of profitable contracts and subsidies for textbook companies, consultants, and others engaged in the big business of education.

Read more to learn their names. They will be familiar to you.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization

The Los Angeles School Board Race Next Tuesday

By dianeravitch
March 3, 2017 //
4

It seems every school board race in Los Angeles is a struggle for the existence of public education.

That is because Eli Broad and his billionaire friends pour millions of dollars into local school board races (and Eli is one of the few billionaires who actually lives in Los Angeles) to try to control it.

Why do they want to control it? None of them has a child in the system. They despise public schools and they want to turn Los Angeles into a charter school demonstration district. It is all about power and money. No matter how many scandals they are in charter schools in Los Angeles or in California, or how many charter leaders are arrested, or how much money is stolen or misappropriated, the charter school advocates won’t give up. They refuse to devote their energy and money to rebuilding the Los Angeles public school system.

Despite Eli Broad’s last-minute disavowal of Betsy DeVos, don’t be fooled. He is thrilled to see a like-minded reformer in charge of the U.S. Department of Education. After all, he is used to it. He was best buddies with Arne Duncan and John King. It wouldn’t do to have someone in the federal Department who actually cared about public schools.

The Network for Public Education Action Fund hopes you will vote for pro-public school candidates next Tuesday.

In District 2, one of the most vociferous advocates of privatization is Monica Garcia. We urge you to vote either for Lisa Alva (teacher) or Carl Petersen (parent) so that Garcia is forced into a runoff.

NPE Action Fund did not make an endorsement in the race for school board chair.

I personally endorsed Steve Zimmer because I know him and believe that he will be far better than any of his challengers. Eli Broad, Richard Riordan, and Michael Bloomberg have bundled a large amount of money to defeat Steve, and that’s reason enough to know that he want him gone. He has tried to be reasonable but they don’t want anyone reasonable. They want a puppet.

I urge you to vote in District 2 for either Alva or Petersen.

And to vote for Steve Zimmer, if you live in his district.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Politics, Privatization

Vicki Cobb: I Attended the Great Debate About Charter Schools at Intelligence Squared

By dianeravitch
March 3, 2017 //
15

On March 1, there was a heated debate around the proposition “Charter Schools Are Overrated,” hosted by Intelligence Squared. The room in New York City was packed. Two academics–Gary Miron of Western Michigan University and Julian Vasquez Heilig of Sacramento State–debated two charter advocates–Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform and Gerard Robinson of the American Enterprise Institute in D.C.

Education Week covered the debate here.

Vicki Cobb, a celebrated writer of science books for children, attended the debate and reports on it here. Cobb notes that she previously served on the board of a charter school, so was not anti-charter. Apparently the audience was evenly divided or undecided before the debate.

Cobb describes the major issues: the question of democracy and control; the question of teacher turnover. On the matter of data, charter schools on the whole perform no better or worse than public schools. Some get higher scores, some get lower scores. It is a wash. But as the anti-charter side pointed out, test scores are not everything.

As Julian Vasquez Heilig argued for the motion: “Charter schools, if they don’t have public accountability, direct public accountability, are antidemocratic. So, saying that publicly elected school boards and districts and unions, which are also democratic organizations are an old idea — I don’t think democracy is an old idea. In fact, I think we need excessive democracy when it comes to our thinking about education reform. We need to avoid education reform that is top down and concentrates power in the hands of just a few people.”

Cobb writes, “By the way, the team for the proposition “Charter Schools Are Overrated,” won the debate.

According to Education Week, The debate’s winner was determined by the percentage of audience members who changed their minds. In the first vote of live audience members, 33 percent cast votes for the motion and 31 percent against. In the final vote, 54 percent were for the motion and 40 percent were against. The rest were undecided.

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

Georgia: Governor Wants to Take Money from Public Schools for Vouchers

By dianeravitch
March 2, 2017 //
1

Governor Nathan Deal never gives up in his effort to defund the state’s public schools. Last November, the voters soundly rejected his proposal to create a district where he could gather low-scoring schools, eliminate local control, and give them to charter operators.

Now he is back with tax credits to funnel money into vouchers.

Here is an analysis by the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, which projects that this plan will cost $100 million annually by 2023:

https://gbpi.org/2017/ballooning-tax-credit-private-school-scholarships/

“State lawmakers are considering a bill that proposes to swell the annual price of Georgia’s tax credit for private school scholarships. House Bill 217 raises the cap to $100 million from the current $58 million on a program that diverts tax revenue from the state to organizations that provide private school scholarships. The tax credit would leave the state short $42 million that could be used for more proven investments, including high quality childcare, services for schools serving impoverished children or need-based financial aid for low-income students. In addition there is little information about who participates in the program and none about its impact on student learning. In 2015 Gov. Nathan Deal’s Education Reform Commission outlined recommendations to increase the program’s transparency and report more information about participants. The recommendations are not yet adopted.

“Overview of Proposal

“Under current law, taxpayers can receive a dollar-for-dollar tax credit in exchange for contributions to a student scholarship organization. Individuals can donate up to $1,000, couples up to $2,500 and corporations up to $10,000 each year. The annual cap on contributions is $58 million.

“Students can receive a scholarship if they are Georgia residents eligible to enroll in pre-kindergarten, kindergarten or first grade or attend a public school for six weeks. The attendance requirement is waived if the student is otherwise required to attend a public school identified as low performing, suffered from a documented case of bullying or is homeschooled for at least one year.

“The proposal outlined in HB 217 increases the cap by 10 percent annually if contributors claimed the total amount of available tax the prior year until the $100 million cap is reached.”

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Funding, Georgia, Privatization, School Choice

Peter Greene: Claudio Sanchez of NPR Sends a Love Note to the Charter Industry

By dianeravitch
March 2, 2017 //
48

Peter Greene reports on an NPR program explaining charter schools. Perhaps you thought the program would give equal time to charter advocates and charter critics. Perhaps you thought you thought the program might explain why charters are controversial. Perhaps you thought that NPR–supposedly a bastion of liberalism–might explain why Trump, DeVos, the Koch brothers, the Waltons, and every red-state governor–loves them. Or why blue-state Massachusetts voted overwhelmingly not to allow more of them.

http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2017/03/npr-explains-charter-schools.html?spref=tw

If you thought that, you guessed by now that none of those things happened.

Claudio Sanchez of NPR interviewed three charter cheerleaders and tossed them softball questions.

Maybe this is what NPR had to do to justify the subsidy it gets from the Walton Family Foundation.

For shame.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Hoax, Media, Privatization
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