Archives for category: Education Industry
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Andrea Gabor: The Fiasco of the Brockton Charter School Continues

By dianeravitch
September 4, 2016 //
5

The top officials in Massachusetts are gaga for charter schools and eager to see Question 2 passed in November. Question 2 would allow 12 new charters to open every year forever. Dark money is pouring in from hedge fund managers to push the spurious idea that expanding charters will help public schools, when we know from experience across the nation that more money for charters means less money for public schools.

Andrea Gabor has been following the drama of the Brockton Charter School, which was passed by state officials despite the strong opposition of people who live in Brockton. The charter was supposed to open this fall but has encountered delay after delay. Now it has been authorized to open 22 miles away. As Gabor explains, that is only one of many problems.

After multiple construction snafus that kept a controversial charter school from opening in Brockton, MA, the commissioner of Massachusetts public schools granted conditional approval yesterday for the school to temporarily move to a site in Norwood, 22 miles away from Brockton.

The decision to allow New Heights Charter School its last-minute move to Norwood is “political,” wrote Sue Szachowicz, the recently retired long-time principal of Brockton High, in an email. It shows how badly the Massachusetts department of education “wants to be sure that this school gets its opportunity.”

Adds Szachowicz:

“This will be interesting to see what happens. Norwood is a pretty affluent town, and not particularly easy to get to. Parents who thought they would be sending their kids to school in downtown Brockton will get their kids to school over twenty miles away in Norwood??? I do not understand this one! Politics, politics…”

Mitchell Chester along with Jim Peyser, the Massachusetts Secretary of Education and Gov. Charlie Baker, the Republican governor of Massachusetts, are all major proponents of an upcoming ballot initiative, known as Question 2, which would raise the Bay State’s cap on charter schools.

Chester did impose a number of conditions on New Heights, according to The Enterprise, the local newspaper: The school must offer two days of childcare to make up for pushing back the start of school. It must also establish occupancy in Brockton by January 3 or face charter probation or revocation. The school also must issue daily reports on student attendance on each of the first seven days of school, followed by weekly updates on enrollment counts, staffing and monthly financial statements.

“While it is not unusual for a new school to have challenges with a single site, it is rare to have it happen at two places,”said Jacqueline Reis, a spokesperson for Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. “Nonetheless, this is not the first charter school to open temporarily outside its region. … While a temporary site is not ideal, families appear willing to try to make it work.”

The Enterprise writes:

There will not be any additional taxpayer cost from the move, Reis said. Based on the maximum first-year enrollment of 315 students from the sixth to eighth grade, New Heights is receiving $3.96 million in combined state and local funds for its first year, which it supplements with grants and privately raised money.

Here is more background on Brockton-now-Norwood charter fiasco from an earlier post:

Amid an escalating battle over a statewide ballot initiative, this November, that would lift the cap on charter schools in Massachussetts, the Brockton charter mess highlights the greatest fears of charter skeptics, including:

–A sloppy approval process, and this in a state that prides itself on having the most rigorous charter approval process in the nation.

–A political establishment that ran rough-shod over the wishes of the local community.

–As families give up on the charter, which has enrolled about 200 students so far, well below its expected first-year enrollment of 315 students, for grades six through eight, they have already begun to return back to the public school system, wreaking havoc with enrollments.

Read the rest of this valuable post.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Massachusetts, Privatization

Gary Rubinstein: Does Arne Duncan Ever Learn?

By dianeravitch
September 3, 2016 //
38

Gary Rubinstein has begun reading the first book to be published by Campbell Brown’s The 74, the website that regularly celebrates charter schools and assails unions and tenure. The book is Richard Whitmire’s “The Founders,” about the men and women who launched the most successful charter schools. Whitmire has previously written admiring accounts of Michelle Rhee and the Rocketship charter chain. This book was underwritten by foundations that support the proliferation of privately managed schools.

When Rubinstein read the foreword by Arne Duncan, he realized that it was almost the same as the excerpt that appeared recently in The Atlantic. There were two missing paragraphs.

Duncan was again praising the all black, all male Urban Prep Charter Academy in Chicago for its 100% graduation rate, 100% college acceptance rate. And again, as in the past, Duncan didn’t mention the attrition rate nor the fact that the school has lower test scores than the average for Chicago’s public schools.

This was especially interesting, because Duncan first told this story in 2011 at the Teach for America anniversary celebration. Gary was there, and he later said that this claim turned him into a critic of the reform movement because Duncan said, “same kids, same poverty, totally different outcomes,” the implication being that a new set of teachers made all the difference. Duncan, of course, proceeded to hail “turnarounds” where the entire staff was replaced. And he hailed the public revelation of teacher ratings based on student test scores in Los Angeles. Even as the value-added measurements have failed to produce any positive results,Duncan continues to believe in firing teachers based on their students’ scores.

Gary contacted me after he heard Duncan, and with his help and that of independent researcher Noel Hammatt in Louisiana, I wrote an op-Ed for the New York Times called “Waiting For A School Miracle.” Duncan still wants to refute what I wrote then. But he and President Obama never, to my knowledge, ever went to a big-city school to praise it unless it had fired the entire staff.

I will leave it to others to explain why the Obama administration had such contempt for regular public schools and their teachers. I don’t understand it.

Duncan’s Convenient Edit

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

Stuart Egan: What if Businesses Were Run Like Schools?

By dianeravitch
September 3, 2016 //
13

In an amusing tour de force, NBCT teacher Stuart Egan (in North Carolina) poses the question, what if businesses were run like public schools?

Public Schools Aren’t Businesses – Don’t Believe Me? Try Running a Business as a Public School

No business leader could function under the same conditions.

Comparing schools to businesses isn’t like comparing apples to oranges, it’s like comparing apples to rocks.

For example:

“Be prepared to open up every book and have everything audited. If you are a public school, then every cent, every resource, and every line item is open to scrutiny by a variety of inspectors. Be prepared to be constantly audited and have those findings be available and open to interpretation to people outside of your business, even when those people may not know how your business operates.

“Be prepared to publicize all of the salaries of the people who work for you. ALL OF THEM. Furthermore, there would no negotiating on salaries. In fact they are all set, not by market standards or demand of talent, but by the government. Furthermore, the salaries of all of your employees will be fodder for politicians and the public alike, especially in election years.

“You must allow every stockholder to have equal power on how your run your business even if they own just one share. Actually, you won’t have stockholders. You have stakeholders. And everyone is a stakeholder because they pay taxes. And stakeholders have voting rights. You constantly have to answer to these stakeholders except everybody – EVERYBODY – is your stakeholder. In essence, you answer to everybody, even the homeowners and properties owners when they see that the value of their homes and property might be closely tied to the schools that service the area.

“Be prepared to abide by protocols and procedures established by people outside of the business. These aren’t the rules and regulations or laws established by governing bodies, but rather curricula and other evaluation systems that are placed on your business by people who really have no background in your field.

“You will not get to choose your raw materials. If your business makes a product, you do not get to negotiate how your materials come to you. You do not get to reject materials based on quality. You must take what is given to you and you must produce a product that is of the same quality as a business that may have choice materials. That is unless you are a private school. But they get to charge money. Your business doesn’t.”

Schools don’t run like businesses. Businesses don’t run like schools.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit

Joshua Leibner: 100 Reasons I Never Liked John Deasy

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2016 //
13

Joshua Leibner wrote an open letter to celebrated author Ta-Nahisi Coates, with the expectation that Mr. Coates would never see the letter.

Leibner, an NBCT teacher in Los Angeles for 20 years, wrote this letter to counter an “open letter” that John Deasy had written to Ta-Nahisi Coates.

Leibner acknowledged that both of them were using the format to make a statement directed at the public, not the author.

He used his letter to excoriate Deasy and his fealty to the agenda of the Billionaire Boys Club.

If Deasy would like to respond to Joshua Leibner, I welcome his letter.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Civil Rights, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Los Angeles

Tom Ultican: A Wonderful Book That Shows the Madness of Corporate Reform

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2016 //
15

Tom Ultican teaches in San Diego. He recently read Ciedie Aech’s new book about teaching in Hyper-Reformy Denver and highly recommends it.

Denver is a trifecta of reformers. Non-educator Michael Bennett was tapped to be superintendent. He has a law degree from Yale. He then was appointed to fill an empty Senate seat, so he is now Senator Bennett. He was replaced by Tom Boasberg, another non-educator. He too is a lawyer with no education background. And Colorado has wonder boy Michael Johnston, the TFA-Broadie in the state senate who wrote the nation’s most punitive teacher evaluation bill. It passed in 2010. Colorado was supposed to have great schools, great principals, and great teachers by now. Results don’t matter.

Tom loved the book and thinks you will too.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Colorado, Corporate Reformers, Denver, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Testing

California: CTA Launches “Kids, Not Profits” Campaign

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2016 //
3

CTA represents charter school teachers in addition to public school teachers. But it is standing up to the billionaires who are promoting charters in hopes of killing unions.


California Teachers Association
1705 Murchison Drive
Burlingame, CA 94010
http://www.cta.org

Contacts: Claudia Briggs at 916-325-1550 or Mike Myslinski at 650-552-5324

Educators Launch ‘Kids Not Profits’ Campaign

Radio Ads and Website Support Legislation for More Charter School Accountability

and Expose Billionaires’ Agenda to Divert Money from Neighborhood Public Schools

BURLINGAME – California’s educators launched the “Kids Not Profits” campaign today, calling for more accountability and transparency of California charter schools and exposing the coordinated agenda by a group of billionaires to divert money from California’s neighborhood public schools to privately-managed charter schools. These billionaires are spending record amounts of money to influence local legislative and school board elections across the state.

The campaign is launching with a series of radio ads and an informative website – www.KidsNotProfits.com – where parents and the public can get more information about privately-managed charter schools, their impact on students, the billionaires behind them and take action to demand accountability, transparency and equal access for all students. A coalition of education, civil rights and community organizations is supporting legislation that is now headed to Governor Brown for his signature. The first radio spots are running in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento. Listen to the English and Spanish radio ads here.

“Public schools should be about students and inspiring young minds – not profits,” said Eric Heins, president of the 325,000-member California Teachers Association. “Educators, parents and civil rights advocates have been talking about the need for accountability and transparency of these privately-run charter schools for some time. We can’t let a group of billionaires with no classroom experience push their profit-driven agenda on our public schools.”

The radio ad lays out the billionaires’ coordinated agenda to:

Divert money out of California’s neighborhood public schools to fund privately-run charter schools, without accountability or transparency to parents and taxpayers.
Cherry-pick the students who get to attend charter schools – weeding out and turning down students with special needs.

Spend millions trying to influence local legislative and school board elections across California.

In the June primary election, this small group of billionaires spent more than $11 million in several state legislative and county office of education races. This network of billionaire donors mirrors the dark money networks used by the Koch brothers. In fact, many of the same donors were directly implicated in an illegal dark money scheme in 2012. This group promised to spend even more in the November election and have already begun writing big checks.

Recent news headlines and academic studies have documented the waste, fraud and abuse by privately-managed charter schools that have cost taxpayers millions while hurting students. An ACLU report, “Unequal Access,” found that more than 20 percent of California’s charter schools deny access to students with disabilities, English learners, or students who have lower grades and test scores. The NAACP recently called for a ban on privately managed charters. State regulators have found more than $81 million in fraudulent and wasteful spending at charter schools in California, while another report shows that an expansion of privately-run charter schools would cost the Los Angeles Unified School District more than $500 million this year alone.

The coalition is calling on Governor Brown to sign AB 709. This bill requires all charter schools to be transparent and accountable to parents and to disclose how they spend taxpayer money, including budgets and contracts. It prohibits charter school board members and their families from profiting from their schools, and requires charter schools to comply with California’s open meetings, open records and conflict of interest laws.

The coalition also supported SB 322, which prohibits charter schools from having discriminatory admission requirements to prevent them from cherry-picking the students they want and turning away students that need extra help, such as special education students, students learning English or students with low academic performance. It also ensures uniform disciplinary actions for all students by requiring charter schools to identify a list of acts for which students can be suspended or expelled, as well as setting a maximum length for suspensions. This bill failed on the Assembly floor late yesterday.

“CTA proudly represents more than 5,000 charter school educators and is working with many others who want to join with us in standing up for students and accountability,” said Heins. “When the charter law was passed in California, no one ever intended it to be a playground for billionaires who want to profit off students and push their agenda on the rest of us. It’s time to hold charter schools and their private operators accountable to some of the same standards as traditional public schools.”

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

Teachers! Can You Teach an Avatar?

By dianeravitch
August 31, 2016 //
14

Alan Singer reports that ETS is adapting its teacher certification. It will replace students with avatars. Computer representations of real students.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/11692858

Why? Pearson is doing it. That’s competition for you. A race to the bottom. Like network television.

There are many reasons to object to th idea of teaching avatars. One is that the essence of teaching is interaction. The teacher and students connecting, responding, reacting. Teaching avatars is like acting without a audience. It can be done, but the actors are at their best when they feel the audience response.

Categories Education Industry, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Leonie Haimson: The New York Times’ Conflict of Interest Reporting on Bill Gates’ Investments

By dianeravitch
August 31, 2016 //
14

Leonie Haimson has written a stunning article about stories in the New York Times that promote investments of Bill Gates without acknowledging that the writer’s outside organization is funded by the Gates Foundation.

She refers in amazing detail to two laudatory articles about Bridge International Academies, the corporation that is providing for-profit schools in poor countries in Africa and elsewhere. Gates is an investor in BIA. The Gates Foundation supports the organization that supports the journalist. BIA is encouraging countries like Kenya and Liberia to outsource their responsibility for primary school education to the corporation, which charges the families about $6 a month. Haimson points out that when the cost of uniforms and supplies and food are included, the total is far higher, and represents about a quarter of the family income. If there is more than one child, the cost may be 2/3 of the family income. You can be sure that the business is highly profitable, and it relieves the country of the necessity of building universal free public education.

The article goes into detail about the research on both sides of the issue, which is not reflected in the Times’ coverage.

Other articles in the New York Times have praised the “flipped classroom,” a favorite of Bill Gates, and edTech schools that Gates endorses.

I hope the Public Editor of the New York Times reads this timely and important critique of their coverage.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, For-Profit, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, International, Media, Privatization

Peter Greene: Reformers Offer $100,000 to Prove John Oliver Was Wrong

By dianeravitch
August 31, 2016 //
48

Peter Greene received a notice from the Center for Education Reform, which has led the fight against public schools for almost 25 years, promising a reward to the charter school that created a video showing how great charter schools are. This was in response to John Oliver’s devastating critique of the charlatans who have profited off the deregulation of public money for nonpublic schools.

Right after the John Oliver piece appeared, the CER asked its followers to write Oliver and tweet him to tell him he was wrong. Apparently this didn’t do the job, so now it is offering a prize of $100,000 for a video showing the awesomeness of privately managed schools.

Greene writes:

I, too, would be interested to see what opportunities charters offer that wouldn’t exist without charters. Perhaps some videos will highlight charter-only perks like “getting away from Those Children” or “enjoying a constantly churning staff of underpaid unretained teachers” or “the delightful mystery of what exactly is being done with our tax dollars” or “the warm glow of knowing that we’ve helped some investors make a buck or ten” or even “the suspense of never knowing when my school might suddenly close.” Please, somebody, make that video…The “Our School Is Great” video is a common genre. Public schools all across the country make them– for free– all the time. But it’s completely in keeping with the charter school industry that, having failed to raise a groundswell of grass roots anger over the Oliver piece (which is now over a week old and yet the righteous indignation over it seems largely confined to people who make their living shilling for charters), the charter cheerleading squad must now pay somebody to stand up for them and help them fight back against this PR disaster.

When I read the CER announcement (I am on the CER mailing list), I was aghast that a school-related organization had that kind of spare money to hold a contest. The Network for Public Education certainly doesn’t. That kind of money represents a large percentage of our annual budget. It must be nice to have that kind of money. But I feel far better having the right principles, even though it doesn’t enhance our bank account. It is good to wake up every day knowing that you are on the right side of history, fighting to create better schools for all. I feel sorry for people fighting for better schools for a few kids, while sucking resources out of the schools that enroll the majority o kids. This is akin to providing 50 life vests for a ship that holds 1,500 passengers. The donor can feel proud of saving 50 lives, while ignoring the other 1,450 passengers. I want a safer ship, a well-trained pilot and crew, and life vests for all.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

PDK Annual Poll: Same Old, Same Old

By dianeravitch
August 30, 2016 //
40

Phi Delta Kappa released its annual poll today. Nothing new except that Gallup is no longer the polling company. No headlines. The only obvious conclusion: the American public is confused about why we have schools and what they should be doing and whether they are doing it well.

The public doesn’t agree on what the purpose of public schools is. 45% says it is to teach academics. About a quarter think they should teach career readiness. Another quarter think they should prepare students for citizenship.

Just to be clear, the reason that public schools were first established and treated as a community responsibility was to prepare good citizens to sustain our society into the future. There are many subdivisions under the goal of preparing to be good citizens, which would include the academic skills needed to read, write, think critically, be informed about issues in science and history, and be in good health. Somehow, the central purpose has been lowered in status. When people lose sight of the central purpose of education, then they fall prey to bogus claims about choice, charters, and vouchers, about which sector can do a better job of teaching academic skills or career skills. We have public schools as a public responsibility to teach young people to become active and informed citizens. All the rest follows.

In reading through the inconclusive public opinion on almost every subject, one question caught my attention because of its wording:

Q. Charter schools are public schools that are run without many of the state regulations placed on other public schools. Do you think it’s better for charter schools to meet the same educational standards as other public schools or to set their own educational standards?

The answer was a split decision. 48% said meet the same standards, 46% said no.

The question assumes that charter schools are public schools.

But charter schools are NOT public schools. Whenever charter operators are sued, their defense is that they are not public schools. They are privately managed schools that receive public funding. As the NLRB ruled last week, and as federal courts have ruled, charter schools are not held to the same standards as public schools because they are NOT “state actors.” Public schools are state actors. Charters themselves plead that they are not public schools. In 2010, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a charter operator in Arizona ran a private nonprofit corporation, not an agency of the state, in response to a lawsuit by a former teacher. In 2011, the staff at the New Media Technology Charter School wanted to form a union. They appealed to state law. The charter owner, however, said the school was not public and was not governed by state law; he said it was a private school subject to the NLRB. In the same year, teachers at the Chicago Math & Science Academy also wanted to form a union. There, too, the charter operator rebuffed them by saying the school was a “private” entity, not a public school, and was not subject to state law. (See pp. 163-164 of Reign of Error). Charter schools are run by private entities that receive government contracts. The receipt of public funds does not make an entity public. If it did, then every major defense contractor would be public, not private.

The answer is troubling as well as the question. If nearly half of the respondents think that charter schools do not have to meet the same standards as public schools, what is it they believe? Do they believe that charter schools should not be held accountable for student test scores? Do they think that charter schools should be judged by some other metric?

I have been reading PDK polls for years. I learned nothing new from this one, other than that the public has lost sight of why we have public schools. That may be the consequence of propaganda from the privatizers. If there is no agreement on why we pay taxes to support public schools, then any alternative will do, including schools run by churches and schools run by foreign nationals.

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