Archives for category: Education Industry
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Kaplan: Denver Sells Out to Corporate Buddies

By dianeravitch
June 14, 2015 //
12

Jeannie Kaplan, a retired member of the Denver school board, can’t stop watching and documenting the follies of corporate reform in her city. Here she tells about the curious alliance between Denver Public Schools and a local health-care provider.

She writes:

“Get this. Over the past four years a Denver-based health care provider settled (without admitting any wrongdoing) three whistle blower lawsuits with the federal government for $961 million. The cases involved defrauding the federal Medicare program ($495 million), double billing the government ($55 million), and engaging in a kick-back scheme for patient referrals. ($411 million). This same company underwrote a Denver Public Schools “pep rally” of sorts in 2012 where, using some of the company’s cultural training techniques, the six core DPS values were determined. Not surprisingly the DPS’ core values look remarkably similar to this company’s core values . And since relocating its headquarters to Denver, the CEO of said company and his wife have contributed $33,000 to four “reform” school board candidates in 2013 (10K to Barbara O’Brien, Mike Johnson, Landri Taylor, 3K to Rosemary Rodriguez) and $61,000 to three “reform” candidates in 2011 ($25K to Happy Haynes and Anne Rowe, 11K to Jennifer Draper Carson). I try not to be overly cynical, which given the state of public education in the United States is often challenging, but when I saw the invitation below, I could no longer contain my cynicism regarding this alliance. It turns out this corporation with core values such as INTEGRITY and ACCOUNTABILITY is COLLABORATING once again with the Denver Public Schools for some FUN, this time to honor those who have a shared value and vision. The company and CEO having such access to Denver Public Schools? DaVita HealthCare Partners Inc. and its CEO Kent Thiry.”

This corporation helped DPS frame its core values. It recently gave a party to celebrate and honor those who share its values.

Kaplan asks:

“How much influence does this corporation actually have within Denver Public Schools? Why is a public institution allowing a private corporation to determine its values? Isn’t this an example of taking privatization within “education reform” too far? Just askin’”

Categories Corporate Reform, Denver, Education Industry

Laura Chapman: The Billionaires and Education “Reform”

By dianeravitch
June 12, 2015 //
22

Our frequent commentator Laura H. Chapman, whose wise analyses so frequently inform all of us, has done some research on the billionaire class. I would add that her second category of schools, public in name only (PINO), includes for-profit charters.

 

 

Many of the billionaires in Forbes 2015 list claim to be self-made and to come from a low to moderate income family. Those are self-reports with no backup data worthy of mention by Forbes.

 

 

According to the Forbes 2015 list of the wealthiest people in the world, The United States has 536 billionaires worth $2.6 trillion.

 

 

In 2014 Warren Buffet made $14.5 billion.

 

 

Among the wealthiest in the US, 23 % of the billionaires claim to have been raised in a household that was “poor,” 17% in a “working class” family. Here are some of the top billionaires and major source of wealth.

 

 

Bill Gates, Microsoft, $ 79.2 billion…
Warren Buffet, Berkshire Hathaway, $72.7 billion…
Larry Ellis, Oracle, 54.3 billion…
Charles Koch, Diversified, $42.9 billion…G. Davis Koch, Diversified, $42.9 billion… Christy Walton, Walmart $41.7 billion…Jim Walton, Walmart $40.6 billion…Alice Walton, Walmart $39.4 billion… S. Robert Walton, Walmart $39.1 billion…
Michael Bloomberg, Bloomberg, $35.5 billion…Jeff Bezos, Amazon, $34.8 billion…Mark Zuckenberg, Facebook, $33.4 million….Sheldon Adelson, Casinos, $31.4 billion…Larry Page, Google, $29.7 billion…Sergey Brin, Google, $29.2 billion…
Forrest Mars, Jr., Candy, $26.6 billion….Jacquelin Mars Candy, $26.6 billion….John Mars, Candy, $26.6 billion….
George Soros, Hedge funds, $24.2 billion…Carl Icahn, Investments, $23.5 billion…Steve Ballmer, Microsoft, $21.5 billion… Phil Knight, Nike, $21.5 billion… Len Blavatnik, Diversified, $20.2 billion…Charles Ergen, Dish Network, $20.1 billion…Lauren Powell Jobs, Apple & Disney, $19.5 billion…Michael Dell, Dell, $19.2 billion…

 

 

So far as I know, only a few analytical studies have been done on the interconnections among grants flowing into K-12 education and the major foundations, many set up by billionaires. Here are some recent findings.

 

 

In 2010, the top 15 grant makers for K-12 education (based on IRS filings) were: the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Walton Family Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Robertson Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Broad Foundation, GE Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation, Doris and Donald Fisher Fund, Communities Foundation of Texas, and Ford Foundation.

 

 

In 2010, the top “convergent grantees”–beneficiaries of multiple funders were:

 
Charter School Growth Fund $46 million, 6 funders;
Teach for America, $44.5 million, 13 funders;
KIPP, $24 million, 9 funders;
D.C. Public Education Fund, $22 million, 5 funders (set up for merit pay) ;
New Schools Venture Fund, $18 million, 10 funders.

 

 

The researchers noted a dramatic increase in convergent grant making between the first year they studied, 2000, and the last, 2010. The increase was not only in dollars but also in the proportion groups that received funds from two or more foundations. As one example, funding for traditional public schools dropped from 16% of grant dollars in 2000 to 8% in 2010 while charter school funding rose from about 3% in 2000 to 16% in 2010.

 

 

Source: Reckhow, S & Snyder, J. W. (2014, May). The expanding role of philanthropy in education politics. Education researcher, 43, 4, pp.186-195. Or see Sarah Reckhow, (2013). Follow the money, How foundations dollars change public school politics. NNY: Harvard Education Press.

 

 

Plenty of money is around, and it is increasingly used to create a tripartate system of education.

 
One is truly public, tax-supported with governance by democratically elected school boards.

 
One is public in name only, tax subsidized, but with governance that is not fully public or democratically determined.

 
The third is private education, including for-profit-by-design education.

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

Peter Greene Explains Why the Free Market Doesn’t Work in Education

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2015 //
32

Peter Greene patiently dissects a paper by Michael McShane of the conservative American Enterprise Institute advocating a free market of competition in education. It is all Bout supply and demand, McShane believes, but Greene says that it is “an exercise in unicorn farming.”

To choose wisely among many schools, parents need full and deep information, the theory goes, but Greene says what they get instead is marketing. How did big corporations succeed? By advertising and marketing.

He writes:

“McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Standard Oil, Bank of America– none of these corporations have dominated their marketplace by spreading information about their products and services. There is no market sector in which customers are moved primarily by information. Succeeding in the marketplace often involves carefully controlling and withholding the information that customers receive. In fact (and this should trouble the boys at AEI), often the real information that is available is available only because government regulation and intervention require it (think nutritional info at fast food places).

“No charter school will ever say, “Let’s get a complete, thorough informational package out there so that families can make the best decision from with the umpteen schools in this market.” What the charter will always say, like any good business, is, “How can we best present ourselves to convince the greatest number of families to choose us?”

Greene takes issue with the supply-side of McShane’s equation:

“McShane frames this as the problem of turning a monopoly into a free market, so he’s wrong right out of the gate– public education is not now, nor has it ever been, a monopoly. And even if we agree that public schools are a taxpayer-operated monopoly, no monopoly break-up has ever involved making the old monopoly operator provide all the financing of the new “competition.” When Microsoft was being threatened with a spanking for being a monopoly, nobody ever suggested that a fitting punishment would be for Microsoft to pay the bills for Apple, Corel, and every other software maker in the marketplace. But somehow the “breakup” of the taxpayer-funded “monopoly” of public schools involves having the taxpayers pay the bills for every school that wants to “compete” with public education.”

Reformers use international test scores as the reason to demolish public education by introducing a free market. Why does it never occur to them that every one of the high-performing nations has a high-quality, equitable public school system. Not one has a free market of privately managed schools. Not one has annual tests as we do. We could learn from them if we tried.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry

For-Profit Company Will Not Offer High School in Michigan Takeover District

By dianeravitch
June 9, 2015 //
25

The Leona Group, a for-profit charter corporation that runs the schools of Highland Park, Michigan, will not offer high school classes next year. It will also end its contract one year early. And enrollment in the schools has dropped by 40% since the for-profit takeover. It is just not that profitable to offer high school.

 

Leona is closing the only high school in the district, and students were stunned.

 

Hannah, a rising junior, said the students were shocked and upset. “A lot of us couldn’t believe that they’d close the only high school in Highland Park,” she told the World Socialist Web Site. “We thought they couldn’t do that, because where would we go? But the superintendent called us all down to a meeting in the lunchroom and said she had done everything humanly possible to try to keep the school open.

 
“It’s really crazy. I am going to miss this school.”

 
A community meeting has been scheduled for Monday, June 8, for parents and students scrambling to find new schools. They will be assigned to the Detroit Public Schools (DPS) system and reportedly will be offered enrollment at DPS schools, a range of other charter operations, as well as slots in the so-called “failing school district” run by the state’s Education Achievement Authority.

 
Displaced students, facing the hardship of much longer commutes, will be given bus passes. This hardly compensates for the potentially drastic increase in commute times. For a student to take a bus from the current high school, Highland Park Renaissance, to the closest DPS high school, Pershing, would require three buses. Wait times in the city are beyond onerous in the former “Motor City” where buses can be hours late. A single bus ride could take students to Cass Tech High School; however, that school has a very selective application process.

 
Hannah said she would be spending her senior year at the Detroit Public Service Academy. DPSA is another Leona Group-run charter school, whose students are called “cadets” and specialize in police, military and emergency responder skills.

 
“It’s not that I want to do that kind of work,” she explained, “I want to do culinary arts, but they’ll have other subjects too. The DPSA will provide buses right at the CVS to get you to the school. If your parents can’t take you to a further school, you need to do what you have to, to get an education.”

 

It’s all about the kids. The state of Michigan has washed its hands of responsibility or accountability for public education.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Michigan, Privatization

Gene V. Glass: Education Reformers and the “Shoe Button Complex”

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2015 //
36

Gene V. Glass, emeritus professor at Arizona State University and an associate of the National Education Policy Center, ponders the ubiquity of the “Shoe Button Complex” among leading “reformers” of education.

In this essay, he recalls a story of a man who became the nation’s leading vendor of “shoe buttons” a century ago. He cornered the market on shoe buttons. He knew everything there was to know about shoe buttons, and he became a very rich man. His great success persuaded him that he was an expert on everything. The essay then refers to the “reformers” who think that their fabulous wealth entitles them to opine on how to re-engineer schools. They don’t listen to people who work in schools or people who are researchers and scholars of education, because those people are not fabulously wealthy; in the eyes of those who have cornered the market on shoe buttons or computers, the opinion of mere educators counts for nothing. Educators, in the eyes of “reformers,” are the status quo because they are educators. Better to trust someone who has never taught or studied the subject in depth.

Glass suggests that Bill Gates and his wife Melinda may be prime examples of the Shoe Button Complex. And then there is Arizona, where he finds this scenario:

Jan Brewer, Republican governor of Arizona and famous for issuing a tongue wagging to President Obama, appointed Intel ex-CEO Craig Barrett to chair a council—Ready Arizona–to study and recommend public education reform for the state. It is unclear what Barrett knows about education. One suspects that we are encountering another case of the Shoe Button Complex. Barrett is urging businesses to push school reform. His public utterances strike familiar chords: the future of the entire state rests on the test scores of little kids; more science and math majors will attract businesses to the state; it’s a global economy. After all, the public schools are “suppliers” of labor for businesses. And at Intel, “if a supplier didn’t meet our specifications, we would call the supplier and say, ‘Meet our specifications or we will fire you.’” Apparently, Barrett shares his fellow Republican Mitt Romney’s pleasure in firing people.

Of course, what Barrett is actually and unknowingly talking about is crony capitalism: Linking government and business in relationships that favor the economy. Whether the intellectual, moral, physical, and aesthetic well-being of young people is benefited by their education probably never occurs to Barrett and his ilk. Or perhaps “well-being” to Barrett means having acquired a taste for consumerism and a job to support it. In fact, most industry leaders would like to see specialized training pushed down as early in the curriculum as possible so that high school graduates appear in their HR departments job-ready, trained at public expense. And if training kids for Intel just happens to involve piping a bunch of online courses into Arizona public schools, well so much the better since Barrett also serves on the board of K-12 Inc., the nation’s #1 supplier of cyber-courses. Whether the former CEO of Intel knows everything there is to know about selling microprocessors AND education, or whether this is merely another manifestation of the Shoe Button Complex remains to be seen.

Categories Arizona, Economy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Jobs

Charter Schools: A Risky Investment

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2015 //
71

The Albany Times-Union reports that Albany’s biggest charter chain is burdened with crushing debt after the closure of two of its schools with poor academic results.

 

 

“The closure of the Brighter Choice middle schools will eventually leave the foundation on the hook for a $15.1 million construction debt it guaranteed that Wall Street doubts it can pay for more than three years. The 30-year bonds were issued in 2012 through the Industrial Development Authority of the City of Phoenix; in March, Fitch Ratings called the schools’ default “inevitable. The foundation has also guaranteed another $1.35 million in related loans for the schools. A default by the schools would force the foundation to find a way to pay the bondholders — Chicago-based Nuveen Asset Management — without the $14,072 per-student revenue that is the core of the Brighter Choice business model, or face having the building sold out from under it.”

 

 

The founder of the Brighter Choice Foundation is Tom Carroll. Carroll is a leading advocate for charter schools in New York state. He is also president of the “Coalition for Opportunity in Education” and the “Foundation for Education Opportunity,” which is advertising and promoting Governor Cuomo’s Education Tax Credit. The ETC would funnel at least $150 million to nonpublic (religious and private) schools.

 

This financial disaster is happening in Albany. Surely Governor Cuomo knows about it. Yet he continues to promote charter schools as a panacea for children in schools with low test scores. He doesn’t seem to realize that schools don’t have low test scores; children do. They need help: smaller classes, guidance counselors, social workers, a full curriculum, not charter schools of unknown quality.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, New York

Ohio Charter Schools: The Money Pit

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2015 //
18

Doug Livingston of the Beacon-Journal writes that Ohio’s charter schools are notoriously wasteful with taxpayer dollars. And he predicts it will get worse because auditing of charters has been privatized. For some reason, private auditors are far less likely to uncover financial abuses.

“No sector — not local governments, school districts, court systems, public universities or hospitals — misspends tax dollars like charter schools in Ohio.

“A Beacon Journal review of 4,263 audits released last year by State Auditor Dave Yost’s office indicates charter schools misspend public money nearly four times more often than any other type of taxpayer-funded agency.

“Since 2001, state auditors have uncovered $27.3 million improperly spent by charter schools, many run by for-profit companies, enrolling thousands of children and producing academic results that rival .

“And the extent of the misspending could be far higher.

“That’s because Yost and his predecessors, unable to audit all charter schools with limited staffing and overwhelmed by the dramatic growth in the schools, have farmed out most charter-school audits to private accounting firms.”

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Ohio

Randal Hendee: The Goal of Reform is Not to Improve Education but to Cut Costs

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2015 //
30

The question frequently arises: Why do so many billionaires support the privatization of public education? Surely, they don’t care about making a profit as they are already billionaires. Here is one possible answer, as reader Randal Hendee posted this comment on the blog about the motives of the billionaires who support “reform”:

 

 

There’s a lot of evidence that reducing the cost of public education is one of the main goals of people like Gates, Broad, and the Waltons. They’re playing a long game that they hope will result in lower taxes for big property owners and for the wealthy in general. At the same time, they see profit in “reform” because even with relatively lower tax revenues, a new cohort of children enrolls every year. Once the opportunists tap into that public revenue stream (through privately operated charters, educational technology, data mining, real estate deals, and so on), the cash cow will keep on giving. Or so they hope.

 

The Walton family fortune is based mainly on cost reduction (that and inventory control via technology and breakneck expansion). The Walton billionaires are billionaires because Walmart learned how to squeeze both suppliers and employees. In the process they put thousands of local merchants out of business. The Waltons are trying to undermine American institutions such as public schools and labor unions. To imagine that these efforts have nothing to do with cost reduction doesn’t square with company history. (If you want to know more about how the family stays so rich, google “Walton tax avoidance.”)

 

While Eli Broad is said to favor higher taxes for the rich, cost reduction is a big part of the Broad efforts. Broad wants fewer schools, larger class sizes, more charters. Charter expansion is one of his big goals, and of course many charter teachers work in sweatshop conditions for relatively low pay. Some of this cost saving is diverted to marketing and high administrative salaries. But the long term idea is to spend less on schools, not more. Presumably, free market incentives will spur “higher achievement.”*

 

Here’s what Bill Gates said about education and technology (and cost reduction) at the 2013 Davos Conference:

 

“Well, we’re taking the Internet revolution and we’re applying it in more areas. So, for example, in education the idea that not only are the best lectures online, but you can interact with people, talk to other students, that we ought to be able to deliver education that’s higher quality but dramatically lower cost. There’s a lot of excitement about that.

 

“MOOC means Massively Online Open Courseware and a lot of good pioneers that are learning and making that stuff better and better. The [Gates] Foundation is the biggest funder of that activity ’cause we see so much promise and the increasing price of education just doesn’t work. You know, a lot of our unemployment is because kids aren’t well educated enough. If you’re a college graduate, unemployment is very low. We’ve got to increase access to education, but letting the price go up won’t allow that.”

 

Anytime you hear someone say, “You can’t solve the problem by throwing money at it,” that person wants to reduce the cost of (that is, underfund) public schools, particularly the ones in poor urban neighborhoods and areas of rural poverty. Gates often used to preface his education remarks by stating that we spend way more than we used to but have little to show for it. He never took inflation into account, nor did he mention special education mandates.

 

Sure, the “reformers” want to “transform” public education by destroying it, but cost reduction is built into their overall scheme.

 

 

*Note: Eli Broad publicly supported Governor Jerry Brown’s proposal to raise taxes for education, but he simultaneously funded a “dark money” effort to fight the same proposition.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Privatization

Robert Cotto Jr.: Follow the Charter Management Fees in Connecticut

By dianeravitch
June 1, 2015 //
22

Robert Cotto, Jr., is an elected member of the Hartford, Connecticut, Board of Education. In this article, he describes the outlandish fees paid to charter management organizations.

“Roughly 10 percent of a charter school’s budget can go toward management fees. For example, the New Haven-based CMO called Achievement First charged Achievement First-Hartford Charter School a $1.14 million management fee in 2013-14. The state provided Achievement First-Hartford charter schools more than $11 million to operate. So about 10 percent of that state funding went to Achievement First the CMO, not the charter school in Hartford, which ended the year with a surplus…..

Multiply this fee by the four Achievement First charter schools in Connecticut, and Achievement First Inc., the CMO, walks away with about $4.45 million in fees.

Not all charter schools are managed by CMOs or pay these management fees. In 2012-13, most charter schools in Connecticut did not pay a “charter management fee.”

If CMOs won’t show us the money, then maybe we don’t need CMOs or their fees. Charter schools can manage without them.

Categories Charter Schools, Connecticut, Education Industry

Patrick Walsh Reviews Mercedes Schneider’s “Chronicle of Echoes”

By dianeravitch
May 30, 2015 //
5

Patrick Walsh, a teacher and blogger in New York City, reviewed Mercedes Schneider’s “Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who in the Implosion of American Public Education.” I missed the review when it first appeared last fall, so am reporting it to you now because it remains timely. Walsh says it is one of the three most important books to read about “reform” today.

 

He writes that if the “reformers” succeed,

 

“…the U.S. public school system, the backbone of American public life, could well be but a memory in another 10 years. The noble art of teaching, which has sustained civilization since the days of Socrates, could well be reduced to a temp job or, at best, a micromanaged performance both scripted and judged by an international corporation like Pearson—which has, over the past decade, evolved from publishing textbooks to producing curriculum, making and grading tests, and in some states is involved in teacher certification—or worse.

 

Who are these people? How did they amass such power over a “public” institution of such magnitude?

 

In “A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who in the Implosion of American Public Education,” Mercedes K. Schneider sets out to answer those questions. She does so with fierce intelligence, wit, an ocean of unearthed facts, and a vengeance. Schneider, who in very short order has established herself as one of the nation’s most profound and prolific education bloggers, has taught for 19 years in many grades in four states and is currently teaching high school English in St. Tammany Parish, La.

 

You can sense her pride in her profession in every word she writes, as well as her righteous rage toward those who would defile it. Schneider is also a Ph.D. in applied statistics and research methods, which, for people who like to bury information and obscure reality with numbers, makes her a force to be reckoned with….

 

The book is as much a modern day bestiary as a chronicle. With the exception of former TV anchorwoman Campbell Brown, recently catapulted to privatization super-stardom, Schneider misses no person and no organization of note. They are all there, all the names conscientious teachers have heard of but whose stories were rendered as hagiographies or remained hidden as a hedge fund. Until now. Here are the stories of economists like Eric Hanushek; the entrepreneurs David Coleman and Eva Moskowitz; the professional think tank thinkers like Chester Finn and Hess; the hedge fund manager messiahs Whitney Tilson and his Democrats for Education Reform (DFER); the “radicals” like Rhee and Wendy Kopp; and, above and beneath all, the limitless coffers of the Gates, Broad and Walton foundations. And, of course, the American Legislative Exchange Council. Schneider shows again and again how they are all linked. Brilliant at uncovering the incestuous forces fueling the entire privatization campaign, she discovers the same few names popping up all over the terrain.

 

Walsh says that “A Chronicle of Echoes” is “an extraordinary achievement.” Dream this: Imagine if every education reporter in the mainstream media read this book.

 

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