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Mercedes Schneider: Will the Waltons Buy the Public Schools of Massachusetts?

By dianeravitch
September 12, 2016 //
35

Wow! I have seen billionaires put money into elections on behalf of charter schools around the country, but this one takes the cake.

Alice Walton and Jim Walton of Arkansas really want Massachusetts to have more charter schools. They must be very unhappy that the public schools of the Bay State are #1 in the nation. Clearly, the state needs disruption and market forces to shake up its highly successful school system.

Mercedes Schneider writes that the two Waltons gave $1.828,770 to the campaign in Massachusetts to increase the number of charters in the state by a dozen a year in perpetuity.

Mercedes writes:


According to the September 09, 2016, filing of the Massachusetts ballot committee, Yes on 2, billionaire Arkansas resident Alice Walton is one of two individuals providing the $710,100 in funding to promote MA Question 2, raising the charter school cap.

Alice Walton provided $710,000.

A second contributor, Massachusetts resident Frank Perullo provided $100 in order to establish the committee.

And then, the Alice Walton cash was moved to another Question 2 ballot committee: $703,770.29 of Alice Walton’s Yes on 2 committee money was expended to fund Question 2 ballot committee, Campaign for Fair Access to Quality Public Schools, where it was combined with billionaire Arkansas resident Jim Walton’s contribution of $1,125,000, thus making the total Walton contribution to the two committees $1,835,000 (and total Walton contribution to the latter committee, $1,828,770.29).

The Campaign for Fair Access total on its Sept 09, 2016, filing was $2,292,183 for 43 contributors– with 79 percent of that money ($1,828,770 / $2,292,183) arriving from two out-of-state billionaires.

In other words, 95 percent of contributors (41 out of 43) provided only 21 percent of the total funding on the Campaign for Fair Access Sept 2016 report.

I can almost hear the conversation between Alice and Jim:

“You buy this Massachusetts ballot committee, and I’ll buy that one.”

“Done.”

The Waltons are not the only out-of-state billionaires using their wealth to influence the charter cap in a state in which they do not reside. According to the September 09, 2016, filing of the Question 2 ballot committee, Great Schools Massachusetts, other out-of-state billionaire/lobbying nonprofit contributors include the following:

John Arnold (Texas), $250,000

Michael Bloomberg (New York), $240,000

Education Reform Now (ERN) Advocacy (New York), $250,000

Families for Excellent Schools (FES) Advocacy (New York), $5,750,000

She points out that the lobbying groups need not report their donors, so no one will know which billionaires chipped in to the campaign to privatize the public schools of Massachusetts.

This is a disgusting display of oligarchs undermining not only public education but democracy.

People of Massachusetts, send the Waltons and their ill-gotten gains, squeezed out of the wages of underpaid employees at Walmart, back to Arkansas. Let them fix their own state’s low-performing schools. Tell them to go away by voting NO on Proposition 2 on November 8.

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

Stephen Dyer Responds to Fordham Institute Critique about the Charter Where Trump Spoke

By dianeravitch
September 11, 2016 //
18

Stephen Dyer said that the for-profit charter school in Cleveland where Donald Trump spoke is a failing school, based on its letter grades. The conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which is an official authorizer of charters in Ohio (though not this one), said that Dyer was wrong. As you may know, the A-F report card idea was invented by Jeb Bush in Florida and has spread to accountability-obsessed states like Ohio. It tends to be an accurate measure of family income. Dyer points out that Fordham was gung-ho to adopt the A-F grades, but doesn’t like them so much now. Ron Packard, the owner of the charter in Cleveland, was previously CEO at the online charter corporation K12, where he was paid $5 million annually. His background is McKinsey and Goldman Sachs. K12 Inc. gets bad reviews for its terrible education record, even from charter advocates.

Dyer responds here:

As you know, Donald Trump came to Cleveland to visit a charter school and announce a massive federal infusion of dollars for school choice programs. Regardless of the wisdom of that plan, I found it curious that he would visit a school with an F grade from the state on student growth — considered the most important metric by many charter school advocates. So I called the grade “failing” in several news accounts.

The Fordham Insitute took me to task for that today. So I felt I needed to respond bceause I actually agree that school performance needs more nuanced measures than the simple test regime we have today. But I found it amazing that Fordham, which pushed for Ohio to go to an A-F report card system because it would give parenhts more transparency about how their schools performed so they could then choose whether a charter would be a better option, is now saying that the F grade at the Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy doesn’t actually mean it’s failing. Especially given that Fordham said the drop in grades this year (due to PARCC and Common Core) gave Ohioans a more accurate assessment of how kids are “actually doing.”

Here’s my response: http://bit.ly/2cJ7PpM

Best Regards,

Stephen Dyer
Education Policy Fellow
Innovation Ohio
35 E. Gay St.
Columbus, Ohio 43215
330-338-1486
http://www.innovationohio.org

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Ohio, Privatization, Testing

Arne Duncan Praising Charters Again

By dianeravitch
September 10, 2016 //
26

Arne Duncan was the best friend the charter industry ever had in the federal government. He praised them again and again, and he periodically announced that he had found a charter school that had closed the gaps and done what no public school could do. He lavished hundreds of millions of dollars on them. I can’t recall him ever praising any public school the way he praised privately managed charters. Apparently, he hasn’t changed his mind. In this article that appeared in The Atlantic, Duncan is back to his old stand, singing the virtues of charters.

But once again, as I have in the past, I have to save Albert Shanker from the bold assertion that he was the visionary who created the charter movement. It is true that Shanker was one of the first to describe a new kind of school that he called a charter school (the other was Raymond Budde at the University of Massachusetts). In 1988, he sang the praises of this experiment. He saw it as a school within a school, made up of union teachers, that would be free to try new methods to teach the disaffected, the kids that regular public schools were not doing well with. He thought these schools would seek out the toughest kids. He said that the charter would have to get the permission of the local teachers’ union before starting. It would be an autonomous teacher-run school with a five-year grant of authority. He saw it as an R&D lab that helped public schools try out and learn new ways to educate.

What people like Duncan and others who invoke Shanker’s name will never tell you is that Shanker turned against his creation only five years later, in 1993. He concluded that charters had been taken over by corporate interests and that his idea had become a vehicle for privatization of public schools. He denounced them as vociferously as he denounced vouchers.
See pp. 123-124 of my book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.” (The page numbers might be different in the new edition. Just read Chapter 7.)

Twenty-three years ago, Shanker repudiated his love for charter schools. Yet people like Duncan continue to salute him as a founding father, as if that makes privatization palatable.

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

Donald Cohen: The Connection Between the Election in Nashville and the Referendum in Massachusetts

By dianeravitch
September 10, 2016 //
6

Donald Cohen is a specialist in the study of privatization. He reports regularly on his online site “In the Public Interest.”

This article appeared on Huffington Post.

He points out that pro-charter forces based in Wall Street spend more than $2 million on ads during the Olympics that were beamed to viewers in Massachusetts.
The purpose of the ads was to promote Question 2, the expansion of privately managed charters in Massachusetts.

The ads are deceptive, pretending that the vote is about improving public schools when it is about diverting funding from public schools to charters.

Cohen notes that the surprising victory of public school supporters in Nashville should give hope to their peers in Massachusetts. The same corporate forces backed a pro-charter slate in Nashville and lost, despite an overwhelming advantage in funding.

Supporters of public schools in Massachusetts, keep up your organizing and tell the public the facts about Question 2 to combat the propaganda on television. #NoOn2

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Fraud, Hoax, Massachusetts, Nashville, Privatization

John Thompson: The Price Exacted from Students for the Test-and-Punish Regime of Accountability

By dianeravitch
September 10, 2016 //
13

John Thompson, teacher and historian in Oklahoma, is a frequent contributor to the blog.

Diane Ravitch publicized an educator’s concise and astute critique of Florida’s standards of instruction where “The FLDOE has absolutely no clue on how long it takes to teach each standard effectively.” An educational software company “looked at the standards that a fifth grade teacher is required to teach effectively and stopped counting when we found it would take a minimum of at least 300 school days to teach the standards to an effective level.” The obvious problem is that covering the tested standards would take 2/3rds of a school year more than the time students are in class – even if there were no disruptions of learning ranging from assemblies and class disruptions to the time wasted on benchmark and other form of testing.

Reader: It Takes 300 Days to Teach the Florida Standards Effectively

Moreover, even a Florida true believer in test-driven, competition-driven reform should understand “that these tests are not built to test your child’s learning knowledge, they are built to evaluate the schools and teachers on their effectiveness on teaching the standards.” Consequently, “In order for a teacher or school to score effectively on these tests you have to hope that the students that are coming into your classroom have at least some prior knowledge of the standards.” That, of course, helps explain why the contemporary reform movement, which was designed to help poor children of color, has inflicted the most damage on the kids that it was supposed to help.

We need far more press coverage of the absurdities fostered by high stakes testing. To know about the real-world effects of corporate school reform is to recognize why it should be ridiculed to death. We must also explain, however, that teaching and testing to a standards regime that is disconnected to reality is more than a farce. It is a tragedy. For our poorest children of color, the test, sort, reward, and punish path to school improvement has been especially cruel. And, don’t even get me started about the damage done to our society’s education values by bubble-in accountability.

In Oklahoma City, before NCLB, administrators would grin when they passed out aligned and paced curriculum guides. All types of educators were mostly amused that anyone would seriously contemplate such a guide for our Standards of Instruction as anything more than some silly paperwork to be filed away and forgotten. The time it took for students to master material obviously was the time it took to master material. There was no possible way that the rate of learning could be predetermined and, back then, administrators knew that there was no alternative to trusting the teachers’ judgments on the pacing of instruction. Besides, teachers and students need to be free to build on the kids’ interests and strengths, and get off the beaten path to engage in class discussions, take field trips, and pursue project-based learning.

The pacing guide listed the standards, or major concepts and skills, that students were supposed to master on its schedule. I was supposed to cover a major standard, something as complex and sweeping as the New Deal or the Cold War, every eight minutes, every hour of every day. A unit on World War II, for example, prescribed a one-day lesson to examine the rise of nationalism in the 1920s and 1930s, describe the causes of the war, elaborate on its outcomes and effects, from the Holocaust against the Jews and other groups, to economic and military shifts since 1945 to the founding of the United Nations and the political positioning of Europe, Africa, and Asia. This lesson was known in the curriculum guide as “Standard 16.4.” Another typical one-day lesson, known as Standard 7.2, was to describe China under the Qin, Han, T’ang, and Sung Dynasties; discuss the traditions, customs, beliefs, and significance of Buddhism; document the impact of Confucianism and Taoism, and detail the construction of the Great Wall.

Since history test scores were not included in the NCLB accountability matrix, nobody bothered to ask whether I followed the pacing guide. By 2005, however, freshman math and sophomore English teachers had to organize their instruction around those standards and, on Fridays, give benchmark tests, provided by the central office. Teachers resisted the micromanaging, so grades were mandated for benchmarks.

Soon failure rates soared from below 20% to 80% to 90% in tested subjects. Within three months, our school lost 40% of its students, mostly to the streets. This occurred as the percentage of our students on special education IEPs peaked at 30% and the number of high schoolers who could not read their name jumped from zero to twelve.

After that horrible fiasco, the doubling down on teach to the test according to a mandated schedule grew worse as individuals were supposed to be held accountable for test-score growth. My students complained that they had been robbed of an education. Their entire career had been dominated by fill-in-the-blanks, worksheet-driven pedagogy. Now, a full generation of kids have been subject to bubble-in malpractice.

And that raises the question of what else has been lost to corporate reform. Since 9/11, the global village has faced incredible challenges, but how many classes have been required to keep their aligned and paced schedule, and thus denied an opportunity to grapple with world historical issues. Digital miracles abound, but have schools introduced the younger generation to cultural literacy and media ethics? The economic and racial divide has exploded into view, but how many classes are denied the time to address the issues raised by Black Lives Matter? Global warming has accelerated and time is running out for wrestling with ecological dilemmas. But, how many minutes are allotted to environmentalism? Someday, our generation may be condemned for ignoring, and allowing our children to ignore, these crucial issues. Our reply – that we had to get through Standard 18.2, or whatever, before the standardized test – is likely to ring hollow.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Testing

Trump Pledges to Break the “Government Monopoly” of Public Schools

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2016 //
32

Donald Trump, whose own children went to private schools that cost about $50,000 a year (or more), has swallowed the far-right Republican doctrine that public schools are “government schools,” and thus somehow less than legitimate.


Donald Trump laid out a $20 billion initiative to bust up a federal “education monopoly,” accusing Democrats of having “trapped” black and Hispanic children in “failing government schools.”

In a speech in Cleveland, and on his website, Trump vowed to support school choice and merit pay for teachers.

“Our campaign represents the long-awaited chance to break with the bitter failures of the past and to embrace a new and strong American future,” Trump said, the Washington Examiner reports.

“There’s no failed policy more in need of change than our government-run education monopoly and you know that’s exactly what it is.”

The Democratic Party has “trapped millions of African-American and Hispanic youth in failing government schools that deny them the opportunity to join the ladder of American success,” he told the crowd, according to the Examiner.

Obviously no one has ever told him that every high-performing nation in the world has a strong public school system, not a choice system of charters and vouchers.

If this guy is elected, you can kiss public schools goodbye.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, International, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

DISGRACE! California Has the Most Unregulated, Unaccountable Charter Schools in the Nation

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2016 //
24

Please sit down before you read this column by Carol Burris about charter schools in California. Burris went to California to visit charter schools and meet with education officials. She has done careful research and concluded that charters in California are a massive rip-off of taxpayers. Burris, who recently retired as a high school principal in New York, is executive director of the Network for Public Education.

Her story begins like this:

You can find a charter in a mall right near a Burger King, where students as young as 12 meet their “teacher on demand.” Or, you can make a cyber visit to the “blended learning” Epic Charter School, whose students are required to meet a teacher (at a convenient, to be determined location) only once every 20 days. There is an added bonus upon joining Epic: Students receive $1,500 for a personal “learning fund,” along with a laptop computer. The enrollment site advertised that students could boost that fund by referring others to the charter chain.

A superintendent can expand his tiny rural district of 300 students to 4,000 by running “independent study” charters in storefronts in cities miles away, netting millions in revenue for his district, while draining the sometimes unsuspecting host district of students and funds. If he is clever, he might arrange a “bounty” for each one opened, while having a side business selling services to the charters. Charters can even provide lucrative investment opportunities for tennis stars and their friends. And then there is the opportunity to “cash in” on international students at a jaw dropping $31,300 per student.

Please read this in its entirety. Charters in California are a national disgrace. They cheat students and taxpayers. Why does the legislature and Governor Jerry Brown permit this sleaze?

We know that Governor Brown opened two charters when he was mayor of Oakland, so perhaps he is partial to charters. We know that the California Charter School Association is the most powerful lobby in Sacramento.

But why would the leaders of the state cheapen and destroy their state’s public schools by allowing this charade to siphon off public dollars?

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Education Week: Black Organizations Oppose Charter Expansion

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2016 //
6

Education Week posted an article, like many others, on the growing African American opposition to the expansion of charter schools.

This was in response to resolutions passed by the NAACP annual convention (not yet ratified by the national board, which must be subject to heavy lobbying by Gates and other funders) and by the Movement for Black Lives (a consortium of 50 black organizations including Black Lives Matter).

The resolutions acknowledged that schooling in black communities is being taken over by outside entrepreneurs, and black parents have no voice when this happens. It is a bit like Walmart moving into your town and killing off all the mom-and-pop stores, then hiring mom and pop as greeters in a massive chain operation, which might abandon the community if sales are not sufficiently brisk.

All such stories about this development have two go-to sources to contradict the NAACP and the Movement for Black Lives: Howard Fuller of Black Alliance for Educational Options and Shaver Jeffries of Democrats for Education Reform.

Neither is a grassroots black organization.

Howard Fuller is black, but his organization has been bankrolled by white rightwing philanthropies since its inception in 2000. Its biggest funders are the Walton Foundation, the Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee (huge supporters of vouchers), the John M. Olin Foundation (now defunct), and the Gates Foundation.

Shavar Jeffries is black, but DFER is an organization that represents white hedge fund managers, including billionaires, who are contemptuous of public schools and eager to privatize them.

Nonetheless, it is heartening to see that truly grassroots groups like the NAACP and many of its chapters (including the New England chapter, which opposes Question 2 to expand charters in Massachusetts) are speaking up and opposing privatization of public schools.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, Privatization, Resistance

Another For-Profit College Chain Closes Down

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2016 //
12

You may recall that the huge Corinthian College for-profit chain closed down last year, stranding over 16,000 students who were saddled with debt and worthless credits. The bankruptcy was precipitated when the U.S. Department of Education cut off federal funding after investigations revealed numerous frauds.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2015/04/26/embattled-for-profit-corinthian-colleges-closes-its-doors/

Now the ITT chain of for-profit colleges is going belly-up, after the Feds pulled the plug. The move leaves 35,000 students and employees out of luck. The students will have difficulty transferring their credits to another college or university since the for-profits are not respected by established institutions.

“Just days before the start of a new school term, ITT Educational Services, one of the nation’s largest for-profit educational companies, closed nearly all its campuses on Tuesday.

“The company cited the Education Department’s recent decision to bar the chain of colleges from using federal financial aid to enroll new students as the reason for the sudden shutdown.

“Except for a small school that operates under a different name, the move puts an end to an operation that has been accused of widespread fraud and abuse, leaving roughly 35,000 students and 8,000 employees in the lurch.

“ITT Educational Services, whose recruitment, lending practices and educational quality have been under scrutiny by federal regulators and state prosecutors for years, said in a news release that it had “exhausted the exploration of alternatives, including transfer of the schools to a nonprofit or public institution.””

Given their long-standing record of fraud, false promises, worthless degrees, predatory recruitment of veterans and low-income students, why did the Education Department allow them to get federal aid for so many years? At long last, accountability. Only the students are left holding the bag.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, For-Profit, Higher Education

Gary Rubinstein: Circle Time at Success Academy

By dianeravitch
September 7, 2016 //
4

Gary Rubinstein discovered that Success Academy charter chain had posted about 500 short videos to show what they do in the classroom. Success Academy is celebrated for its phenomenal test scores, far higher than other “no excuses” charter schools. Gary watched several of the videos.

In this post, he discusses a reading lesson for very young children called “Circle Time.” The video is linked. Gary discusses the video and invites readers to comment. The comments by early childhood teachers are interesting.

Gary writes:

“She reminds them how to sit to make this “the most enjoyable story yet” which includes having a really straight back and hands clasped together while tracking the speaker.

There is a lot of “behavior narration” going on, where the teacher constantly points out to the class students who are following directions well. (“Yolanni’s tracking up here.” “Davin brought it right back”) I find it very annoying and I feel like if I were a child it would detract from the story.

The teacher is in complete control. She allows the kids to make some gestures from time to time, but then quickly gets them to return their hands to their laps. I’m kind of scared of this teacher, whoever she is.”

After Gary posted this, almost all the videos were taken down. Then they were restored. Then they were removed again. Curious.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Discipline, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, Privatization
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