Archives for category: Education Industry
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Mercedes Schneider: The Training of an (Alleged) Charter School Fraudster

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2016 //
7

Mercedes Schneider dug into the background of Chris Clemons, the Atlanta charter school principal, who has been accused of stealing $600,000 from his school.

She found an article from his days at MIT, explaining how he developed a passion for teaching “impoverished children in urban areas.”

He trained as a school leader at “Building Excellent Schools,” a Boston-based program to prepare principals to open and run charter schools. He launched a charter school in Denver, his hometown. And then he went to Atlanta to open charter schools. He was charged by the FBI with theft, not only for the missing $600,000 from his current school, but for another $350,000 that was missing from two other charter schools that he ran.

Categories Accountability, Atlanta, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Fraud

California: Charter Lobby Pulls a Dirty Trick and Throws in $1.2 Million for Legislative Race: VOTE KASSAKHIAN TOMORROW!

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2016 //
18

The California Charter School Association is a super-rich, highly political power broker in politics. It wants to control every possible seat in the state legislature so it can pursue its goal of mass privatization of public schools across the Golden State.

Consider this dirty trick: It has created an organization called the “Parent Teacher Alliance,” which endorses candidates. Thus, the candidates can say that they were endorsed by the “PTA,” even though this Parent Teacher Alliance has no affiliation with the Parent Teacher Associations of the state.

The Los Angeles School Report, whose editorial content is directed by Campbell Brown, has a story about a crucial legislative race playing out in a district where the assemblyman vacated his seat. Voters will decide tomorrow. The go-to speaker quoted in the story is Marshall Tuck, who ran and lost as the pro-charter candidate against Tom Torlakson, the state superintendent. Tuck speaks from the “reform” point of view, labeling those whom he doesn’t like as union candidates.

Here is the bottom line on spending: A rift in the Democratic Party over education policy comes into sharp relief one day before California’s primary election as a record $28 million has been spent by outside groups on state races, one-third coming from groups supporting charter schools.

There you have it: with all the issues facing the state, one-third of the $28 million spent by outside groups on state races is coming from charter advocates.

The latest example in Southern California is playing out in an open state Assembly district seat in Glendale, Burbank, La Canada Flintridge and parts of Los Angeles where an independent expenditure committee supporting charter schools has spent more than $1.2 million to back a Democratic candidate, flooding voters’ mailboxes over the past eight weeks with attack ads on a fellow Democrat supported by teachers unions…..In the 43rd Assembly District seat, being vacated by Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D-Burbank, due to term limits, an independent expenditure committee called the Parent Teacher Alliance, sponsored by the California Charter School Association Advocates, has spent $1.2 million as of Friday, state campaign finance records show. Parent Teacher Alliance is not associated with the well-known Parent Teacher Association.

Records show that donors to the CCSA Advocates Independent Expenditure Committee include Michael Bloomberg, Doris Fisher, Jim Walton and Eli Broad.

Glendale City Clerk Ardy Kassakhian has been backed by the California Teachers Association, which is considered among the most powerful lobbyists in Sacramento. Glendale City Councilwoman Laura Friedman has been endorsed by the California Charter School Association Advocates, the political arm of the CCSA. The union and education reformers have clashed over education policies like teacher tenure and the expansion of charter schools.

How touching to see that billionaires like former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Doris Fisher (of the Gap business), Jim Walton (of Walmart), and Eli Broad are deeply engaged in financing the phony “Parent Teacher Alliance.”

Here is the spending:

State campaign finance records also show the California Teachers Association’s Independent Expenditure Committee has spent $47,721 on the race: $35,791 on mailers opposing Friedman and $11,930 supporting Kassakhian.

The CCSA committee has spent $910,791 supporting Friedman and $304,355 opposing Kassakhian as of Friday, records show.

This is the score: $1.2 million assembled by the California Charter Schools Association to beat Kassakhian; $47,721 spent by the California Teachers Association to support Kassakhian. Goliath vs. David.

The fight over charter schools in California is really a fight over the future of public education in the state. Will there be public education 20 years from now, or will community schools be run by entrepreneurs and charter chains whose corporate leaders are based in other states?

If you live in the 43rd Assembly District, please vote for Ardy Kassakhian. DON’T LET THE BILLIONAIRES BUY YOUR PUBLIC SCHOOL.

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

EduShyster: What the “Reform” Movement Doesn’t Know about Massachusetts

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2016 //
14

In this post, EduShyster gives a lesson to corporate reformers who want to reorganize the education system that has made Massachusetts first in the nation on every national and international test.

Their view of the Bay State’s schools is warped by their ignorance. They see Massachusetts as a model of “the first way” (i.e., public schools). Then, “reform” was jump-started by the charter schools added in 1993 (all 25 of them for the whole state). And now, they believe, Massachusetts needs to go “the third way.” Apparently the third way is to make Massachusetts look a lot like Denver (which readers of this blog know is no model).

What they don’t know is that the 1993 legislation increased school spending dramatically, by one-third. In its wake came tests for new teachers, uniform standards and assessments for the state, and early childhood education. The goal was to equalize funding among the best and worst funded districts.

But what is this Third Way. Read the article to find out, but expect to see a blurring of the lines between public and private, plus many opportunities for inexperienced teachers and for entrepreneurs.

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

John Thompson on the Reformers’ Debate about Black Lives Matter: Reformers Now Attack Reformers with the Same Venom They Used on Teachers

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2016 //
16

The previous post referred to a debate among reformers about the role of the Black Lives Matter movement within the current education “reform” (testing and privatization) movement.

John Thompson, historian and teacher in Oklahoma, here responds to the debate with trenchant insights.

He writes:

I’ve communicated with enough reformers to know that their coalition is fraying. They’ve pushed an edu-politics of destruction based on the punitive use of test results in order to keep score in their competition-driven movement. Now, it is obvious that value-added teacher evaluations and their one-size-fits-all micromanaging have failed. Many or most, however, are still committed to high-stakes testing in order to speed up their rushed effort to close schools in mass.

Other corporate reformers seem to believe they can use their (admittedly brilliant) high-dollar public relations campaigns to drive the expansion of charters. They’ve finally realized that parents are preoccupied with what’s best for their own children, not education policy. They are marketing to parents who can’t stop the damage that the extreme proliferation of choice does to children left behind in weakened neighborhood schools, but who ignore test scores and seek safe and orderly schools for their own kids.

He asks inconvenient questions about why reformers vilify teachers and want to bust unions.

What I can’t grasp, however, is liberals who assail other liberals because we won’t use the stress of high stakes testing to overcome the stress produced by generational poverty. I still can’t understand civil rights advocates who condemn other civil rights advocates because we oppose school segregation as a means of reversing the legacies of segregation.

Had the technocrats spent more time in the inner city classroom, and in the homes, hospital rooms, the streets and, yes, the funerals of our kids, they’d have known we needed more “disruptive” innovation like we need another gang war. Had they shared the joy of teaching and learning for mastery that builds on the strengths of our kids, they would not have dumped reductionist behaviorism on children. But, because teachers saw things differently, we were condemned as the “status quo,” which accepted “Excuses!,” and renounced “High Expectations!”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Testing, Unions

Reformers Debate the Black Lives Matter Movement

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2016 //
22

If you wonder what reformers are thinking about in private, here is a peek behind the curtain.

Elizabeth Green, founder of Chalkbeat, writes about the debate among reformers about the Black Lives Matter movement.

African American reformers questioned why there are so few people of color in leadership roles in the education reform movement, and whether it can even be called a movement because it is led by people who are white and privileged. Those are questions about power and control, which are important.

Among the questions that were not raised:

Why do reformers think that black children benefit by taking standardized tests that label most of them as failures beginning in grade 3?

Why do reformers express so little concern about class size, budget cuts, funding, and segregation?

Do reformers believe that black children benefit by being in classrooms filled with exploration and joy, rather than test pressure?

Why are reformers eager to open charter schools with no-excuses discipline, where black children are treated like robots and trained to obey?

Do reformers worry that the expansion of charters harms the remaining public schools, which enroll far greater numbers of black children than charters?

Do reformers worry about directing so many inexperienced, first-year teachers to the schools that enroll black children?

Are reformers at all concerned that charter schools are more segregated than the public schools in the same district?

Why do reformers think that giving black children a voucher to enroll in a church school with uncertified teachers will prepare them to thrive in the 21st century?

Why aren’t the leaders of reform fighting for schools that black children attend that look like the schools their own children attend?

Are reformers worried about the disparate impact that “reform” policies have had on black teachers?

Do reformers think twice about union-busting and supplying scabs for non-union schools?

Do reformers understand the role that unions have played in building a middle class?

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Race, Testing

SHOCKER: Walton Funds Illinois State Charter Commission, Which Blocks Closure of Failing Charter Schools Funded by Walton

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2016 //
14

The Chicago Sun-Times reported on a startling conflict of interest.

The rightwing, anti-union Walton Family Foundation has been funding the Illinois State Charter School Commission, a state agency, as well as many charter schools in Illinois. When the Chicago Public Schools recommended closing two charter schools because of their poor performance, the Commission blocked the closing. The two failing charters were also funded by the Walton Family Foundation.

Have you ever heard of a public agency that relied for funding on a private foundation with a political agenda of privatization?

Reporters Dan Mihalopoulos and Lauren FitzPatrick write:

A private foundation started by the late Walmart mogul Sam Walton and his wife has contributed heavily to the Illinois State Charter School Commission and to two charter operators whose schools the state agency has blocked the Chicago Board of Education from closing over poor student performance, records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times show.

Even in the complex history of public education in Chicago, the situation involving the two charters, the Chicago Public Schools, the charter commission and the Arkansas-based Walton Family Foundation is unusual.

Unusual is an understatement.

For years, CPS has faced criticism for allowing the expansion and taxpayer-financed funding of privately run charters even as it shut down traditional public schools over low enrollment and bad test scores.

Aiming to show it expects charters to meet the same standards as CPS schools, the Board of Ed moved last November to cut off funding for three schools — including the Amandla Charter School in Englewood and Lighthouse Academies’ school in Bronzeville — over poor student performance. The charter commission overruled the Board of Ed and, in March, blocked CPS from closing the schools.

Beside Amandla and the Bronzeville Lighthouse Charter School, the commission also saved the Betty Shabazz International Charter School’s Barbara A. Sizemore Campus in Englewood from being closed. The Walton foundation hasn’t donated to Shabazz.

CPS responded later in March by suing the state agency over its ruling, which Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s schools chief, Forrest Claypool, called “ill-advised and destructive.”

Over the past 20 years, the Walton foundation has given more than $45 million to educational groups in Illinois, including charter schools and the state commission that regulates them, records examined by the Sun-Times show.

The biggest recipients were the Chicago-based IFF — which helps charter schools finance construction projects and got more than $9 million — and the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, an advocacy group that’s received about $8 million.

The Illinois charter operator that benefited most from Walton grants was the UNO Charter School Network, which got more than $3.5 million from the foundation. Its last grant was in 2012 — a year before Sun-Times reports exposed a contracting scandal involving the politically connected charter operator.

Though the commission is a government agency, its initial funding came from private organizations and individuals, including the Walton foundation. Current and former commission leaders say they sought grants because state lawmakers didn’t provide funding when they created the agency.

Members of the commission insisted that they were not influenced by the Walton Family Foundation to stop the closure of the two Walton-funded charter schools.

Whether they were or they were not, it is strange to see a state agency underwritten by the sponsor of the organizations that the agency is supposed to regulate. A classic example of regulatory capture.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Education Industry, Illinois

Just Published! A Revised Edition of “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education”

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2016 //
17

I am very pleased to let you know about the publication of a newly revised edition of The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.

Perhaps you read it when it was first released in 2010. It was big news at the time, because I broke ranks with the conservative think tanks and policymakers who had once been my allies. I spoke out against the misuse of testing and the dangers of privatization. This was unexpected from someone who had been an Assistant Secretary of Education in the administration of President George H. W. Bush, who served as part of three conservative think tanks, and who had written many articles about the “crisis” in American education.

I thought I had made a clean break with the Bush-Obama agenda. But in time I realized that I had not completely escaped the old, failed way of thinking (like a state, tinkering with people’s lives from afar). The book continued my longstanding support for a national curriculum and predicted that it would be smooth sailing now that the culture wars were over. I was wrong again!

In this new revision of the book, I have removed any endorsement for a national curriculum or national standards or national tests, and I explain why. The controversy over the Common Core standards taught me that the U.S. will never have a national curriculum, and furthermore, should never have one.

I also explain why a national curriculum and national examinations will not reduce the achievement gap among different racial and ethnic groups and will not reduce poverty. The advocacy for them–from the same people who support privatization–continues to be an excuse for avoiding the issue of poverty. And I rewrote the chapter on “A Nation at Risk,” showing how it dodged the most important issues in our society, which were economic and social, not educational.

Yes, there is a “crisis” in education, but it is not a crisis of test scores or failing schools. The crisis is caused by policymakers, federal officials, foundations, and business leaders who are imposing failed ideas on the schools. These impositions are hurting students, teachers, principals, communities, and public education itself. They have failed and failed, again and again, but those who support the Bush-Obama agenda of competition, choice, testing, and accountability refuse to re-examine their assumptions. Their inability to recognize their own failure has created disruption (which they admire), turmoil, and massive demoralization among educators.

I hope you will consider reading the book. I think that D&L continues to speak with passion to the terrible and real crisis in American education, a crisis caused by non-educators who want to turn our schools into job-training units, who want to emphasize standardized testing to the detriment of students, educators, and public schools, and who foolishly think that privatization will improve education.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reform, Curriculum, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, Standardized Testing

The Biggest Charter School Theft in Georgia History

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2016 //
16

Molly Bloom of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution writes here about the biggest theft in the brief history of charter schools in Georgia. That state is in the process of expanding the number of charters and is considering creating an “Achievement School District,” modeled on the failed ASD in Tennessee, in which low performing schools are turned over to charter operators.

Here is the story of Atlanta’s Latin Academy Charter School.

A $12,000 charge at a strip club. Thousands of dollars spent at Mercedes-Benz of Buckhead. ATM withdrawals of hundreds of dollars at a time.

The charges to Atlanta’s Latin Academy Charter School should have raised eyebrows. For the top state education officials and corporate executives on the school’s board, they should have set off earsplitting sirens.

Instead, the charges continued for years, siphoning more than $600,000 in taxpayer dollars that should have been spent on students.

Christopher Clemons, the school’s founder, has been charged with fraud and theft in the largest such case in Georgia charter school history.

Clemons left Atlanta after the losses were discovered.

He left a rented townhome strewn with Hermes boxes, lease paperwork for a new BMW, used boarding passes and a Rolex receipt.

He left the school so financially troubled that board members closed it.

He left nearly 200 children with few options.

And he left a cautionary tale for Georgia’s growing charter school movement. Latin Academy, with its all-star board and experienced leader, seemed on track to thrive. But behind that facade of apparent success, the school spent millions of tax dollars with little public scrutiny and operated with a lack of public input foreign to many traditional public schools.

Latin Academy’s academic performance ranked in the top 25 percent of all Atlanta middle schools in an area where neighborhood middle schools are better known for hallway chaos than academics.

Clemons is presently in jail in Colorado, awaiting extradition to Georgia.

In the last decade, the number of students in charter schools has tripled to 91,000, with more growth expected. In addition, the legislature allows entire districts to have “charter-like” freedoms, which means deregulation and freedom from oversight.

Expect more scandals, fraud, corruption, and theft. If men were angels, there would be no reason for oversight or regulations.

Could someone explain why deregulation is supposed to create better education?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Georgia, Privatization

Anthony Cody: The L.A. Times is Complicit in Failures of Gates Programs (Link Fixed!)

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2016 //
14

As readers know, the Los Angeles a Times published a scathing indictment of Bill Gates and his ill-fated forays into education policymaking. The Times noted Gates’ serial failures, one of which was his naive belief that teachers should be evaluated by the test scores of their students. This idea appealed to his technocratic, data-driven mindset.

Some cheered the Times’ about-face, but Anthony Cody did not. He argues that Los Angeles Times was complicit in some of Gates’ worst ideas, despite the absence of evidence for their likely success. It gave full-throated support to John Deasey when he ran the city’s public schools with a heavy hand and spent profligately on ed technology. While wiser heads were skeptical about Gates’plan to evaluate teachers by test scores, the Times decided to create its own test-based rating system and published the results.

Cody calls for accountability. The line between advocacy and reporting is thin, and he believes the Times’ reporters crossed it. They should have investigated the Gates’ theory, but instead they acted on it, assuming its validity.

Cody writes:


“I have a question related to journalistic integrity. How can the LA Times chastise the Gates Foundation – and their disciple John Deasy, without acknowledging their own embrace of Gatesian reforms? The LA Times did not just report on the issue – they created their very own VAM system, and criticized Los Angeles Unified for not using such a system to weed out “bad teachers” and reward those identified as “effective.” They were active advocates, instrumental in the war on teachers that has been so devastating to morale over the past decade.”

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Los Angeles, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Sign the NPE Action Proposal to the Democratic Party Platform Committee

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2016 //
38

The Network for Public Education Action Fund has drafted a proposal for consideration by the Democratic Party’s Platform Committee.

We call for the elimination of federal mandates for annual testing; for a declaration of support for public schools; for a ban on for-profit charters; for regulation of charters that receive federal funds to assure that they serve the same children as the public schools; for revision and strengthening of the FERPA privacy laws to protect our children’s data from commercial data mining; for full funding of special education; for support of early childhood education; and for other means of improving the federal role in education.

The proposal is in draft form. We will be making revisions. If you see something you think needs fixing, let us know.

Please read our draft proposal. And if you agree, add your name of our petition to the Democratic party. We plan to make the same appeal to the Republican party.

Both parties, we hope, will support the public schools, which educate nearly 90% of the nation’s children. Public schools are a bedrock of our society, in the past, now, and in the future.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Data and Data Mining, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, NPE Action Fund, Parents, Privatization, Resistance, Standardized Testing, Vouchers
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