The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) is one of the most profitable charter schools in the nation. Its owner, William Lager, is one of the biggest donors to the Republican party in Ohio. ECOT offers K-12 instruction online and is paid full state tuition for every student. Most of this money is deducted from the funding of the local school district where each student lives. ECOT has the lowest graduation rate in the nation. According to the New York Times, in the 2014 fiscal year, the last year for which federal tax filings were available, the school paid the companies associated with Mr. Lager nearly $23 million, or about one-fifth of the nearly $115 million in government funds it took in.
The state recently asked ECOT to demonstrate that its students are actually logging on and participating in instruction. The issue is in court because ECOT says that the state is overstepping its bounds and the company has no obligation to demonstrate that its students participate even for a minute a day.
The state’s fight over whether the giant ECOT online school deserves the $106 million in state money it receives hit the courtroom today, with ECOT lawyers saying the state is using rules that are “unenforceable” and the state saying the school’s objections are “absurd.”
The school and Ohio Department of Education are expected to be before Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Jennifer French for the next three days to present their differing views on a crucial issue: Whether online schools have to show that students actually participate in their online classes, or just that the schools provide classes.
In opening arguments this morning, lawyer Marion Little said state rules and a 2003 contract with ODE only require the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow to prove that students are enrolled, not that they are engaged in their lessons.
Little said that e-school funding is set by enrollment but the state this year has tried to “merge” the “distinct” and separate ideas of participation with enrollment to audit the school and put its funding at risk.
The original idea of charter schools, as espoused not by Albert Shanker but by people like Chester Finn Jr., was a deal: Autonomy in exchange for accountability.
ECOT offers a different deal: Autonomy without accountability. Just give us the money and trust us.
Alan Singer writes here of Trump’s proposal to let federal funds follow students to the school (or the computer) of their choice, which would put a knife into public education, which has been a central institution in American democracy.
He writes:
Donald Trump has never had much use for public schools, or for that matter, his own children when they were younger. As a boy The Donald attended the private (and expensive) Kew-Forest School in Queens, New York. Because of “behavior problems” there, he completed secondary school at the New York Military Academy, a private (and expensive) boarding school. Sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr. were shipped out to attend and live at the private (and expensive) Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, while daughter Ivanka went to the private (and expensive) Chapin School in New York City and then the Choate Rosemary Hall boarding school in Wallingford, Connecticut. At Hill the tuition for 2015-2016 school year was $54,570. Choate is currently a relative bargain at $48,890 a year. Tiffany Trump escaped with her mother, Trump’s middle wife, to Calabasas, California, where she attended the private Viewpoint School. The youngest Trumpster, Barron, age 10, still lives at home and attends the private (and expensive, annual tuition is over $45,000) Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School on the Upper West Side in Manhattan.
All of this makes The Donald as much an expert on public education as he is on the military, foreign policy, or life on the economic margins. But that isn’t stopping Trump from promoting his education plan, one designed to destroy public education in the United States. The basic Trump proposal is to divert $20 billion in federal grants from public school districts to charter, private, parochial, and online schools, effectively bleeding public school systems to death.
Trump calls his school plan choice, as if ordinary Americans will ever be able to choose the kind of schools he chose for his kids. He demands that Americans trust him and boasts they should give him a chance because he will be a great president. The thing is, we already know Trump’s school plan is a recipe for disaster.
He says, “Trust me.” Why should we? Like the students who were defrauded at Trump University? No, thanks!
Our reader Jack Covey watched the Boston Globe debate about Question 2 closely and reports here, with links. Question 2 seeks to add a dozen charter schools every year without end. The state board already demonstrated in Brockton that it is willing to impose a charter school even if the community opposes it. The “choice” is made by the state board, not by parents.
Charter critics complained that charter boards have few if any parents of the children or members of the local community on them. The charter advocate explained that it’s a very good thing to have school boRds run by financiers because democracy is the problem. Charters can simply close if they don’t produce test scores. Of course, we know that’s not true. There are thousands of charter schools that have lower scores than the neighborhood public schools, and the charters are not closed. As many readers on this blog have noted, scores are not the only or best way to measure the value of community public schools. Closing public schools doesn’t help them, and a policy of charter churn doesn’t help children or communities.
What the charter advocates seem to say is that affluent communities can have democracy, but poor communities are not ready for self-governance. I think that’s called colonialism.
How embarrassing for Massachusetts that the “reformers” there rely on the Waltons and Wall Street to extinguish democracy in black communities.
At one point, the Female Moderator cites how,
with rare exceptions almost none of the Board
Members for charter schools are parents, or
live in the community. Instead, they are
corporate and financial executives who are
not elected by onyone. The charters are in
low income communities, and everyone on
their boards of directors are businesspeople
from upscale communities. Therefore, there’s
no mechanism by which thisparents or taxpaying
citizens in the communities in which these
charters are locatedcan execute any kind of
decision-making power, or that those charter
boards can be held accountable.
The response from Charter Lady Marty Walz is
basically.
“So what?”
… or that such a “local control” democratic system —
via democratically elected school boards — sucks
and should be done away with anyway.
BOSTON GLOBE:
“It is local control that got us into this situation that we’re in, where tens of thousands of children are being left behind by their local district schools,” said Marty Walz, a former Democratic state representative, fending off a question about the large number of corporate and financial executives who sit on the boards of Massachusetts charter schools.
MARTY WALZ:
“The reason charter schools exist is because local school districts have wholly failed to educate far too many children in this state,”
Walz said at the debate, which featured an audience of partisans hissing and clapping at various points.
Walz then says that the accountability mechanism — the only one needed, she claims — is that if the charter schools fail to perform, they can be closed. That’s ultimate accountability, she argues.
That’s like recommending the Death Penalty — going only to that — rather than fixing the schools while the schools are alive.
I guess the response to that is …
“How about parents and taxpaying citizens being able to hold charter governance accountable WHILE THOSE CHARTER SCHOOLS ARE STILL IN OPERATION… before the “ultimate accountability” of closing those schools occur?
… is complaining about. The scenario that Charter Lady Walz is defending and promoting creates a scenario for major corruption and egregious mis-management … and discovery and correction of such malfeasance can only happen IF— and it’s a big IF — the charter industry operates with some transparency in regards to the tax money is is spending, which they, as a rule, most certainly DO NOT. Indeed, it’s a big IF because those same charter folks fight tooth-and-nail any attempts to audit their books, or their admissions and expulsions policies, etc.
Eva at Success Academy has sued multiple times to prevent any examination of her organization.
The whole controversy regarding funding S.A.’s Pre-K is about this.
KIPP got Arne Duncan’s Ed. department’s okay to hide all this information from the public
The Center for Media and Democracy’s PR Watch reported that the KIPP charter chain received permission from Arne Duncan and U.S. Dept. of Education one that can only be discovered and corrected AFTER these outrages occur.
Here’s that part from the debate:
(34:30 – )
(34:30 – )
FEMALE MODERATOR: “Representative Walz, for some who oppose Question 2, one of the issues that it comes down to is this, and I’m going to paraphrase Carol Burris, she’s a former New York high school, and she says:
CAROL BURRIS:
” ‘The democratic governance of our public schools is a American tradition worth saving.’
” … and then the Annenberg institute for school reform at Brown University earlier this year released a study, and they analyzed EVERY board for EVERY charter school in the state of Massachusetts. and they found that ..
“31% of trustees (school board members) statewide are affiliated with the financial services or corporate sector. Only 14% were parents.
“60% of the charter boards had NO parent representation on their boards WHATSOEVER.
“Those that DID were largely confined to charter schools that served MOSTLY WHITE students.
“Here’s an example: City on a Hill (Charter) Schools in Roxbury — again, this is according to the Annenberg Institute Report — has schools in Roxbury and New Bedford, (has a) 14-member board, trustees for all three of those schools.
“ONLY ONE member of the board lives in New Bedford. Three live in Boston, but NONE in Roxgury. The rest live in (upscale communities) Brookline, Cambridge, Cohasset, and Hingham.
“So they (at Annenberg) ask:
” ‘How can those charter schools be considered locally controlled and locally accountable?’ ”
Charter Lady Walz responds by claiming — and winning applause from the charter folks stacked in the audience — that local control through school boards has “wholly failed’ to produce quality schools and educate children, and need to be wiped out. Those in the audience are cheering the end of democracy? Really?
Wait. Isn’t Massachusetts the highest achieving state in the U.S.? Really? She says that democratically-governed schools with elected school boards in Massachusetts have “wholly failed” students? Really?
At another point in the debate, Charter Lady claims their group is about improving all types of schools, but here she is recommending replacing all of them with privately-managed charter schools. So which is it?
The Moderator interrupts by insisting that Charter Lady answer the question about accountability, and Charter Lady brings up the only method needed — the Death Penalty AND THAT’S IT…. but no accountability while those schools are actually open. And we need to watch John Oliver again to find out how well that works out:
Myra Blackmon is one of the most astute commentators on education in Georgia. She writes often for AthensOnline. In this column,she takes issue with the advocates for an “Opportunity School District,” which is on the ballot on November 8.
The proposed constitutional amendment would allow the state to take over schools with low test scores. It guts local control. As we have seen again and again, state takeovers have repeatedly failed, because the state doesn’t know more than the local school board. The Tennessee Achievement School District, which is a model for Georgia, has not produced any results in its four years of operation. The low-performing schools in the ASD are still low-performing, still eligible to be taken over yet again, but by whom? The Educational Achievement Authority in Michigan has been a disaster.
So why is Georgia following these failed examples? Well, eliminating local control is recommended by the far-right ALEC. ALEC’s goal is privatization, not “rescuing” poor kids.
The proponents of this measure claim that they will “rescue” poor kids from “failing schools,” the usual mantra of privatizers. But the claim is a hoax and a deliberate effort to deceive voters.
Blackmon writes:
These rescuers must have been living on another planet if they haven’t seen their proposed “solution,” a state takeover with no accountability, go down in shame all over the country. They tried it in New Orleans and gave up because it didn’t work. They’ve been trying it in Nashville, and the confiscated schools are doing worse than they were when their “rescue” began. They tried it in Detroit and 11 of the 14 schools that were “rescued” are still failing.
The so-called “Opportunity School District” is among the worst of a long string of dangerous ideas and policies forced on local school districts in Georgia. It is a power grab, pure and simple, moving control of local schools from those closest to them to an unaccountable gubernatorial appointee who, from on high in Atlanta, will dictate local education policies and practices.
The language both on the ballot and in the enabling legislation sounds like a plan for everyone to hold hands and happily work to improve education. But that’s a lie.
These self-styled rescuers of poor children want to turn education over to their buddies in the privatization movement. They want accountability for everyone but themselves.
Rescue, my eye. Keep our opportunities local. Vote “no” on Amendment 1.
Mercedes Schneider reports here on the unprecedented spending on the Massachusetts ballot question on expanding privately managed schools. She includes the spending by both sides: those who want more charters and those who do not.
Most of the funding against charters comes from teachers’ unions and people who live in Massachusetts.
Most of the funding for charters comes from financiers and billionaires who do NOT live in Massachusetts.
Boston radio station WGBH reviewed spending records on the charter referendum and found that charter supporters, based largely in New York City in the financial industry, have thus far spent more than $12 million to promote passage of Question 2. Question 2 would remove the cap on charter schools.
The opposition consists of billionaires like Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York City, who gave almost $300,000, and the Waltons of Arkansas, who gave $1.8 million.
The chairman of the Massachusetts State Biard of Education gave $100,000 to the pro-charter, pro-privatization camp. Lifting the cap would strip resources from the state’s excellent public schools. Opponents have started a change.org petition calling on the Governor (a privatization advocate) to oust the chairman of the state board because of the blatant conflict of interest.
Expect more money from Wall Street before November 8. This is a must-win for the privatizers.
He describes the problems that many charter schools have encountered–or created–because of their lack of transparency. He might have added that they are not only non-transparent, they are also unaccountable in their use of public funds:
Since these charters are exempt from most school district laws, there’s nothing on the books compelling them to abide by California’s open-meeting and open-records rules. And these days, California is being singled out for lax oversight of its booming charter school industry. “I came away appalled,” says Carol Burris, executive director of the New York-based Network for Public Education, after a recent fact-finding trip to the state for a four-part series she’s writing on the state of charters in California. “I was really taken aback by how unregulated charters are in the state.”
Part of the problem, says Burris, is Governor Brown’s pro-charter stance; last year he vetoed a bill that would have banned for-profit charter schools in the state, a restriction that even many charter school advocates support. Another factor, says Burris, is that the California Charter Schools Association, which did not respond to a request for comment for this article, has become a powerful lobbying force against many reforms, thanks to major funding from deep-pocketed charter advocates.
Charter critics contend that the absence of regulations contributes to the scandals that have plagued California’s charter schools, including:
Charter operators who were found guilty of misusing hundreds of thousands of dollars in public funds.
A charter principal who moonlighted as an NBA scout on his school’s dime.
A charter teacher who claimed her boss told her to fly to Nigeria and marry her brother-in-law to make him a U.S. citizen.
Last year, a report by the Center for Popular Democracy, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment Institute and Public Advocates Inc. concluded that charter school fraud and mismanagement had already cost California taxpayers more than $81 million. And last month, the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and Public Advocates reported that more than 250 California charter schools – one-fifth of the state’s total – violated state law by excluding low-performing and other potentially undesirable students. In both reports, authors concluded that because of minimal oversight, such misconduct findings are likely to be “just the tip of the iceberg.”
Such troubles don’t just generate headlines; they impact students, says Sarah Vigrass, a longtime K-8 teacher at California Virtual Academies (CAVA), the state’s largest online charter school. In July, K12 Inc., the Virginia-based for-profit that manages CAVA, agreed to a $168.5 million settlement with California in the wake of a state Attorney General probe and a Mercury News investigation into whether the company had manipulated its success rates and attendance records. According to Vigrass, over the years she’s seen K12 reduce the quality and quantity of education materials it provides to its students – but she and her colleagues have no way of knowing why that might be happening.
Julian Vasquez Heilig, a professor at California State University, chair of the California NAACP education committee, and a board member of NPE, says in the article about Governor Jerry Brown:
“Does he want his legacy to be the anti-democratic privatization of our public schools?”
Charles Pierce is an incisive blogger for Esquire. Whenever he writes about schools, he is right on. In this post, he warns people in Massachusetts against a Question 2, which would expand the number of charters by 12 a year forever. Pierce knows that hedge fund managers and billionaires the funding this campaign, and the proposal is deliberately deceptive, appealing to people to improve their public schools. The real purpose, as we know, is to undermine public schools and fund privately managed schools that do not answer to the community that pays the taxes to support them.
Pierce quotes liberally from Carol Burris’s excellent report on the lack of oversight of charters in California.
He writes:
“There’s now a bill before Governor Jerry Brown that would tighten the public accountability standards for charter operators within the state. The evidence is now abundantly clear in a number of states: As it is presently constituted, the charter school movement is far better as an entry vehicle for fraud and corruption than it is for educating children. The fact that the charter industry is fighting to maintain its independent control over taxpayer funds is proof that the industry knows it, too.”
Merryl Tisch stepped down as chair of the New York State Board of Regents at the end of her term in the spring of this year.
She recently gave an interview where she expressed her support for nonpublic education. Her view was similar to the plan put forward later by Donald Trump: The public should pay for religious and private schools. The story appeared originally in politico.pro, which is behind a paywall.
Tisch calls for increased charter, parochial school affordability
Former state Board of Regents chancellor Merryl Tisch touted the need for school choice and increased access to charter and parochial schools on Wednesday, even in the form of an education tax credit.
Tisch told John Gambling on “AM 970 THE ANSWER” that politics often impede good practice, saying there needs to be a “more affordable” option. “[L]et choice be charter choice, be parochial choice, give families the opportunity to move their children forward, give them the opportunity to have a real ability to access high quality education for their children, and these communities will rise up,” she said.
Tisch, who championed the roll out of the Common Core learning standards, stepped down after 20 years on the board when her term ended in March.
She said Wednesday there is a need for healthy competition for public schools, and described the success some of the well-funded charter school networks are having in terms of student results. “The charter schools in New York City are outpacing the educational gains from around the state,” she said.
However, spots at charter and parochial schools can be difficult to get, charter seats being determined through a lottery system and parochial spots being a matter of affordability. Tisch told a story about a mother she met who had twins, and only one of them was able to get a spot in the charter school. A report from the New York City Charter School Center released Tuesday found that nearly 45,000 city students are on charter school wait lists.
“This notion that we deny choice when the choice is so stark between performance and non-performance to me is criminal,” Tisch said.
She mentioned current tax credit legislation as a possible option. That legislation would provide a credit for donations made to public and nonprofit schools and scholarship funds. The measure, however, has failed to make it through the teachers’ union-aligned, Democratic-lead state Assembly.
Both Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the Republican-lead Senate have pushed for the credit, though their versions vary, with the Senate’s, for example, including donations made to charter schools.
Regardless of the type of school, Tisch said schools need to be made affordable so parents, especially those in struggling communities, can chose what is best for their children.
“To deliberately go out of your way to force a family to send a child to a school which, more often than not, has failed not only that child, but also the parents of that child, and to just continue to allow it to go on like this to me is a real crime,” Tisch said.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misstated what the tax credit legislation under consideration would do. It would provide a credit for donations to public and nonprofit schools, as well as scholarship funds.
“On Wednesday, Sept. 14, 9 pm ET, PBS and NOVA will air a two hour special called “School of the Future.” The advertisement tells us much. They are warning that the future for children demands that students need better preparation to succeed due to globalization. What they probably won’t tell us is that this future will likely continue to be manipulated by corporations.
“Technology
“This abstract, strange future they speak about (possibly puzzling to the smartest among us), will be about technology, of course.
“Their message appears to be that we better address technology that can be used with students, even to study their brains to see if they can learn faster and better. The goal is to close the achievement gap.
“The ad has that hint of emergency for which school reformers are known.
“Sal Kahn of Kahn Academy fame will be on the program. I don’t mind Kahn’s online instruction, but it is naïve to believe that such a program will replace public schools and real teachers.
“And that’s what today’s technology is about. Don’t be deceived by the few teachers that might be shown on this program.
“In some parts of the country they are sitting children online in teacherless preschools.
“They are replacing elementary, middle, and high school classes led by teachers with all online instruction, even though research shows that more computer time doesn’t work out as well as less screen time.
“Many school districts have wasted an exorbitant amount of money on iPads that have not proven to be worth what administrators thought when they purchased them. In some places they sit unused in the closet.
“Technology isn’t bad. It can benefit teachers, students and parents. But it should not be made to appear like it will miraculously improve the way students learn used alone.
“Many parents understand this. The reasonable use of technology is what Parents Across America recently advocated for in a position paper. They recognize the overarching push many corporations are doing to destroy public schooling by creating all online schooling.
“The last chapter in my book Losing America’s Schools: The Fight to Save Public Education is about the technology threat. I believe, like many, that the ultimate goal of the school reformers involves closing public schools in favor of all online–at home or in substandard charter schools set up like warehouses.
“Technology might help the homebound student or the student in rural areas, but this is an alternative. It can also provide review for students who need it, or advanced information for students who want it, but it is not as good as brick-and-mortar schooling.
“It is also troubling to hear repeated claims that computers will individualize schooling which we will hear about in this program. They might give students lessons at their level of understanding, but truly personalized learning involves real teachers and students with which to connect. The human element is critical.”
Get ready for the Brave New World of education, the one without teachers. Think of the cost savings!
Jesse Hagopian, a teacher and civil rights activist in Seattle, writes here about the growing Black resistance to corporate reform. The resolutions adopted by the NAACP and the Movement for Black Lives to stop the expansion of charter schools is only the beginning, he says, of opposition to the corporate agenda.
A moratorium would halt the granting of any more licenses to open new charter schools — that is, schools funded by the public but privately run and not accountable to democratically elected school boards. The NAACP announcement has corporate education reformers reeling. Rick Hess, director of education policy at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, said that if local governments adopt the NAACP’s proposed moratorium, “It would give a permanent black eye to the sector.”
If the NAACP’s stance on charters would bruise the corporate agenda, then the declaration from the Movement for Black Lives — the newest civil rights coalition, comprised of dozens of grassroots organizations around the country — would flatline it altogether. The coalition released a policy platform at the beginning of August that called for, among other things, a moratorium on all out-of-school suspensions and the removal of police from schools, replacing them with positive alternatives to discipline and safety. It also called for a moratorium on charter schools and school closures, and full funding formulas that adequately weigh the needs of all districts in the state.
Hagopian knows that the high-stakes testing and privatization of public schools is not in the interest of Black students, although reformers claim they are.
Billionaire philanthrocapitalists have upended education over the past 15 years by backing a series of major policy changes — codified in the No Child Left Behind Act, the Race to the Top initiative and the Common Core State Standards. These policies have badly damaged education for all kids and have had particularly harmful effects on Black and Brown communities. Today, increasing numbers of people have discovered that these reforms are in reality efforts to turn the schoolhouse into an ATM for corporate America.
While their program for corporate reform is being eroded by research and rising grassroots movements, the corporate reformers are clinging to one last glossy brochure in the public relations portfolio — the one with photos of Black youth on the cover and promises that all of these reforms are really about civil rights and defending kids of color.
What they don’t want you to know is that their favorite schools have high suspension rates for Black students and are highly segregated. They are, he says, part of the School-to-Prison Pipeline.
What the testocracy doesn’t want you to know is that standardized testing is a multibillion dollar industry, with the average student in the American public school system taking an outlandish 112 standardized tests during their k-12 career. They don’t want you to know that many schools that serve Black and Brown students have become test-prep factories rather than incubators of creativity and critical thinking, with testing saturating education at even higher concentrations in schools serving low-income students and students of color. They don’t want you to understand the way high-stakes tests are being used around the country in service of the school-to-prison-pipeline. A review by the National Research Council concluded that high school graduation tests have done nothing to lift student achievement, but they have raised the dropout rate. When one test score can deny students graduation — even when they have met every other graduation requirement — it can have devastating consequences. Boston University economics professor Kevin Lang’s 2013 study, “The School to Prison Pipeline Exposed,” links increases in the use of high-stakes standardized high school exit exams to increased incarceration rates.
