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Politico.com: Education is a Major Issue in Elections

By dianeravitch
September 29, 2014 //
6

Politico.com reviews a number of governor’s races around the country, and here is the takeaway: governors who cut education funding are on the defensive, even insisting that they didn’t do it.

Consider this:

” The fight is fierce in Pennsylvania, where Democratic challenger Tom Wolf is accusing Gov. Tom Corbett of cutting $1 billion in education funding, forcing 20,000 teachers out of the classroom and prompting 70 percent of school districts to increase class sizes [http://bit.ly/1llmers]. Corbett has countered with an ad accusing Wolf “and his special-interest groups” of spending millions to mislead the public, claiming that funding during his tenure as governor has increased each year to its highest level ever [ http://bit.ly/1rs9rXY%5D. But it’s Wolf who’s resonating with voters – he’s up about 17 percentage points in the polls [http://bit.ly/1rsawPz].

“- Check out this new roundup of campaign trail reaction to GOP governors who’ve cut education funding, exclusive to POLITICO [http://politico.pro/1wLJO4C]. American Bridge President Brad Woodhouse tells us governors like Rick Scott, Sam Brownback and Scott Walker are getting “slammed … dealing a major blow to their electoral futures.”

On California it is a close race for state superintendent between educator Tom Torlakson and investment bbanker-charter cheerleader Mardhall The fight is fierce in Pennsylvania, where Democratic challenger Tom Wolf is accusing Gov. Tom Corbett of cutting $1 billion in education funding, forcing 20,000 teachers out of the classroom and prompting 70 percent of school districts to increase class sizes [http://bit.ly/1llmers]. Corbett has countered with an ad accusing Wolf “and his special-interest groups” of spending millions to mislead the public, claiming that funding during his tenure as governor has increased each year to its highest level ever [ http://bit.ly/1rs9rXY%5D. But it’s Wolf who’s resonating with voters – he’s up about 17 percentage points in the polls [http://bit.ly/1rsawPz].

– Check out this new roundup of campaign trail reaction to GOP governors who’ve cut education funding, exclusive to POLITICO [http://politico.pro/1wLJO4C]. American Bridge President Brad Woodhouse tells us governors like Rick Scott, Sam Brownback and Scott Walker are getting “slammed … dealing a major blow to their electoral futures.”

In California, it is a right race for superintendent between educator Tom Torlakson and privatizer Marshall Tuck. The future if public education in that state hangs in the balance. If Tuck wins, expect more charter schools and attacks in due process rights for teachers.

Categories Budget Cuts, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Illinois, Pennsylvania

Charter Advocates in NYC Launch Ad Buy, Rally This Week

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2014 //
33

The charter school industry plans a half-million dollar TV campaign this week in New York City, capped by a big rally later in the week. By closing their schools, they can turn out tens of thousands of children and parents, especially if their charter school directs them to show for the rally and provides buses to transport them.

What if the public schools held a rally for the 1.1 million children they enroll? What if their parents or guardians showed up too?

Then the politicians could compare a rally with 60,000 children and a rally with 1.1 million children?

Too bad the public schools can’t or won’t order their students to attend a rally. The charters school leaders do and will, thus magnifying their numbers and inflating their importance.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, New York City

Denny Taylor Responds to Marc Tucker About the Power of Elites and $$ to Control Our Lives

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2014 //
11

Denny Taylor, a professor emerita of literacy studies at Hofstra University, here comments on the recent exchanges among Marc Tucker, Anthony Cody, and Yong Zhao about high-stakes testing and education reform. The key issue, she believes, is not so much about policy as it is about money, power, and control. When big money takes control of public policy, what is at risk is not only children’s lives and their education, but democracy itself.

Taylor has written a scorching analysis of Marc Tucker’s finances and his role in education reform.

She writes:

“I have read with interest the dialogue between Marc Tucker, Diane Ravitch, Anthony Cody, and Yong Zhao on the establishment of an American test-based public education accountability system. Forty years of research on the impact of political structures on social systems,[1], [2] in particular public education,[3] leads me to categorize Marc Tucker’s rhetoric as nothing more than political cant to protect the lucrative profits of poverty “non-profit” industry that is bent to the will of the powerful rich donor groups that are dominating education policy in the US and UK.

“It is the PR discourse of big money that shapes the lives of teachers and children in public schools, and confounds the lives of families with young children struggling with the grimness of developmentally inappropriate instruction in public schools – instruction that rejects all that we have learned as a society about child development, how children learn language, become literate, and engage in math and science projects to both discover and solve problems. Knowledge gained from the sciences and the lived knowledge of human experience, the very essence of our human story, no longer counts.

“Tucker’s view of education is economic. Children in, workers out, could be the mantra of National Center on Education and the Economy. The NCEE website toots the familiar horn of the rich non-profit educational organization stating that: “Since 1988, NCEE has been researching the world’s best performing education systems to unlock their secrets.” Nonsense, of course. What NCEE has actually been doing is making money.

“In 2012 the total assets of NCEE were $93,708,833, with total liabilities of $1,572,013, and net assets of $92,136,820.[4] This highly lucrative “non-profit” fiefdom receives substantial funding from a long list of “donors” including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Broad, Walton, and Walmart Foundations. NCEE has also received substantial funding from the US Federal Government…..

“NCEE was the majority shareholder of America’s Choice, Inc. (ACI), which was established in November 2004 as a taxable for-profit subsidiary of NCEE. NCEE reorganized its internal America’s Choice program as a separate subsidiary to attract the capital investment and management talent to expand the implementation of the America’s Choice comprehensive school design program and related offerings for struggling schools. [6]

“In addition to his lucrative salary [$819,109 in 2012], Tucker was awarded stock options in ACI. In the 2010 Federal tax return for NCEE it further states:

“While any growth in the value of ACI would benefit these optionees, it was anticipated that such growth would also benefit NCEE’s charitable mission.

“NCEE then sold off ACI to Pearson. Here’s what is written on the next page of the 2010 federal tax return:

“The work of NCEE going forward will be funded in large part by the $65.9 million in proceeds that NCEE received as a result of the sale of ACI to Pearson…”

Taylor writes:

“Local control has been eviscerated through the enactment of laws and policies that have ensconced the Common Core in the new business driven public education system, which is centrally controlled through mandatory, highly lucrative, commercial accountability systems, that drain the coffers of local communities and diverts funds from essential programs and services that are no longer available for children in public schools.

“The new report on the American accountability system is just another example of big money writing private policy and sugar coating it to make it palatable. Zhao took the plan apart piece by piece, and Tucker might indeed counter Zhao’s arguments, but there is another problem, a little known fact, that cannot be explained away, not by the educational non-profits serving the needs of the big money backers who make public policy, or by the federal government that benefits.

“The basic research on which the economic system of public education was founded has no scientific legitimacy. This is not unsupported opinion; it is fact.

“At the beginning of the 1990’s, a well-orchestrated effort in state-corporate cooperation was initiated to disenfranchise the growing influence of teachers at the local level across the US, who were creating and using developmentally appropriate teaching-learning materials and activities in public schools that limited the influence of corporate curriculum producers. [19]

“School districts were spending money on real books instead of artificial, commercially produced programs, and there was concern about the growing rejection of commercial text-book producers, including McGraw-Hill, in the five big adoption states – Texas, California, Michigan, Florida, and New York.

“Billions in revenues and profits were at stake. Profits dropped. Not a whole lot, but even a slight dip could be counted in the hundreds of millions. Worse, the growing teacher-led democratic movement was taking hold, causing concern about displacement of the powerful elites in government and big business. From studying the teacher movements of that time, I can write that teachers really believed that through the ways in which they were teaching children in school, society could become more equitable.[20]….”

After a lengthy analysis of the power of big money to capture education policy at the federal and state levels, Taylor writes,

“Again, to ensure that this is not seen as unsupported opinion or that NCEE is an aberrant anomaly, one of the platforms on which big money is falsifying facts is the National Council on Teacher Quality, which has an Advisory Board that includes Pearson International, The Hoover Institution, the American Enterprise Institute, and Murdoch’s News Corporation. The assessment of the syllabi of reading courses in US schools of education by private groups with a commercial agenda is not only political, it is predatory. The assault on faculty and students in colleges of education by NCTQ is also an aggressive act against teachers and children in K-12 public schools that impacts the academic development of the nation’s children, and also their health and well-being.

“When an ideological elite joins with the economic and political forces that control what human beings do, it is important that we confront our illusions and expose the myths about what is happening in K-12 public education. The very existence of NCTQ is a clear indication that we live at a time when the pressures on educators and children in K-12 public schools are reaching a tipping point.

“It is the nightmare scenario that so many of us dread, when the escalation of the causes and conditions that have such a negative effect on the lives of teachers, children and their families become self-perpetuating, and reach a point beyond which there is no return from total disequilibrium. When this happens, at our peril, this nation will no longer have the smallest hope of becoming democratic. Self-aggrandizing private groups with corporate power will overwhelm the system and our struggle for democracy will flounder.

“But there is more than democracy at stake. Once again, to quote Eisenhower:

“Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society’s future, we — you and I, and our government — must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
What Tucker or many of his contemporaries don’t seem to get is that there is no time left for big money to mess around. The problem is that the redesign of our public education system based on “meeting today’s economic needs” is getting in the way of the transformation of schools which is urgently required to meet the real needs of our children tomorrow. The assessment system that he is pushing on teachers and children is designed to prepare children to work for the corporations that are using up Earth’s resources, contaminating the planet, causing the climate system to adversely change, and making Earth an unsafe place for our kids to be.”

“….. In public education we need big money to change everything. Tucker must alter course, save face before it is too late, and help get his contemporaries – the men with money, power, and privilege – to acknowledge that under their leadership the public education system has floundered, and that if, we are going to prepare today for tomorrow, we need to support the courageous teachers who were and are making a difference for children and society before big money got in the way. [26], [27]”

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates

National Urban League, with Lots of Gates $$$, Supports Common Core

By dianeravitch
September 27, 2014 //
17

Politico.com reported that the National Urban League is aggressively supporting Common Core. Politico neglected to mention that the National Urban League has received more than $5 million from the Gates Foundation in recent years. Anytime that any group advocates for the Common Core, publications should report whether they are funded by the Gates Foundation. The oversight is comparable to giving the results of a study showing that smoking does not cause cancer, yet failing to report that the study was funded by cigarette companies.

Here is the politico report:

“URBAN LEAGUE STEPS INTO CORE WARS: The National Urban League is stepping up its advocacy in support of the Common Core with new radio and TV spots narrated by CEO Marc H. Morial. In one ad, an African-American student flips through a textbook and imagines great possibilities for his life, as images flash by depicting him as a judge, a soldier and an astronaut. “When we put our children first with Common Core, there’s no telling how far they can go,” Morial says. The other shows girls and boys of several races, ages and sizes lining up for a race – which, a bit perplexingly, they all end up winning, thanks to “equitable implementation of Common Core.” The ads were created by the National Urban League in partnership with Radio One, a media company that focuses on African-American audiences. Both will run through Nov. 22 on Radio One, TV One and REACH Media shows, which include broadcasts headlined by the Rev. Al Sharpton, Bishop T.D. Jakes and others. The ads: http://bit.ly/1DxlrfB”

Now what is sad about this is that there is zero evidence that the Common Core and the “harder” tests will reduce the achievement gap or help black students. In New York, where Common Core tests have been offered twice, a large majority of black students “failed” the tests. Eighty percent or more of black students in NewYork did not meet the state’s “proficient” standard. What will happen to them? Will they get a diploma? Will continued “failure” increase the dropout rates? According to this study, dropout rates are likely to double under Common Core’s “rigorous” demands. The study is called”Opportunity By Design,” but it might also be called Failure by Design.” Is this what the National Urban League wants?

Categories Common Core, Education Industry

Story of the Day: Education Entrepreneurs Set to Disrupt Our Schools for Their Profit

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2014 //
61

This is the most important article you will read this week, this month, maybe this year. Lee Fang, a brilliant investigative reporter at the Nation Institute, documents the rise and growth of the new for-profit education industry. They seek out ways to make money by selling products to the schools, developing new technologies for the Common Core, writing lucrative leasing deals for charter school properties, mining students’ personal data and selling it, and investing in lucrative charter schools.

Their basic strategy: disrupt public education by selling a propaganda narrative of failure, which then generates consumer demand for new, privately managed forms of schooling (charters and vouchers), for new products (a laptop for every child), and for new standards (the Common Core) that require the expenditure of tens of billions of dollars for new technology, consultants, and other new teaching products. The Common Core has the subsidiary effect of reducing test scores dramatically, thus reinforcing the failure narrative and the need for new schools and new products. Meanwhile, absent any evidence, the boosters of the Common Core promise dramatic results (“bigger better cleaner than clean, the best ever, everything you ever dreamed of, success for all, no more achievement gap, everyone a winner”), while reaping the rewards.

The end goal is the reaping of billions in profits for entrepreneurs and investors.

The crucial enabler of the entrepreneurial takeover of American public education has been the Obama administration. From the beginning, its Race to the Top was intended to close schools with low scores, require more charter schools, all to create a larger market for charter organizations. Its requirement to adopt “college-and-career-ready standards” established the Common Core standards in 45 states, thus creating a national market for products. Its funding of two national tests guaranteed that all future testing would be done online, thus generating a multi-billion dollar market for technology companies that produce software and hardware. At the same time, the Obama administration was curiously silent as state after state eliminated collective bargaining and silenced the one force that might impede its plans. Neither President Obama nor Arne Duncan made an appearance in Wisconsin when tens of thousands of working people protested Scott Walker’s anti-union program.

Lee Fang has connected the dots that show the connection between entrepreneurs, the Obama administration, ALEC, and Wall Street. We now know that their promises and their profit-driven schemes do not benefit students or teachers or education. Students will be taught by computers in large classes. Experienced and respected teachers do not like the new paradigm; they will leave and be replaced by young teachers willing to follow a script, work with few or no benefits, then leave for another career choice. Turnover of teachers will become the norm, as it is in charter schools. “Success” will be defined as test scores, which will be generated by computer drills.

This is the future the entrepreneurs are planning. Their own children will be in private schools not subject to the Common Core, or large computer-based classes, or inexperienced teachers. The public’s children will be victims of policies promoted by Arne Duncan to benefit the entrepreneurs.

We see the future unfolding in communities across the nation. It can be stopped by vigilant and informed citizens. If we organize and act, we can push back and defeat this terrible plan to monetize our children and our public schools.

Categories ALEC, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, For-Profit, Technology, Computers

Matthew Di Carlo: The Fatal Flaw of the Reformers

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2014 //
65

Matthew Di Carlo of the Shanker Institute says that the reformers cannot succeed, despite their best intentions, because they over promise what they can accomplish. Whether it is a promise of closing the achievement gap in short order, turning around 1,000 schools a year for five years, college for all, or making every single child proficient by the year 2014, they set goals that might–if all goes well–be achieved in decades, but cannot be achieved in a few years. They say “we can’t wait,” as if their sense of urgency will surely cause obstacles to crumble. But the obstacles are real, and genuine change requires time, patience, will, and the collaboration with teachers that reformers think they can bypass.

Hubris has its limits.

Categories Charter Schools, Closing schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform

My Review of Kristen Buras’ Counter-Narrative of the “New Orleans Miracle”

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2014 //
24

The first thing to be said about Kristen Buras’ new book is that the publisher overpriced the book ($125). As the author, she had nothing to do with that poor decision. This is a book that should be widely read, but at that price, it won’t be. There will eventually be a softcover edition, but probably not for a year. Urge your library to buy it, or get together a group of friends to pool the cost. Or contact the author directly, and she will send you a coupon that gives you a 20% discount (kburas@gsu.edu).

Although it has its share of academic jargon, it is a major contribution to the literature about post-Katrina New Orleans that directly challenges what you have seen on PBS or heard on NPR or read in the mainstream media. Buras has written her narrative from the grassroots, not from the top. She has spent countless hours interviewing students, parents, teachers, and reformers. She has read all the relevant documents. This is the other side of the story. It is important, and you should read it.

In 2010, I went to New Orleans at the invitation of my cyber-friend Lance Hill, who was running the Southern Institute for Education and Research. Lance arranged for me to speak at Dillard University, a historically black institution in New Orleans, and he invited some of the city’s leading (displaced) educators. There were advocates for the charter reforms in the audience, and they spoke up.

But most of the audience seemed to be angry teachers and administrators who had been fired, and angry parents whose neighborhood school had been taken over by a charter. What I remember most vividly from that evening, aside from meeting the direct descendants of Plessy and Ferguson, who now work together on behalf of racial and civic amity, was a woman in the audience who stood up and said, “After Katrina, first they stole our democracy, then they stole our schools.”

I understood that she was unhappy about the new regime, but I understood it even better after I read Kristen L. Buras’ Charter Schools, Race, and Urban Space (Routledge). It is just published. As i said at the outset, the publisher priced it out of the reach of most people who want to read it. What a strange judgment at a time when so many cities are closing down their public schools and handing their children over to charter operators because they want to be “another New Orleans.” If there is one lesson in Buras’ book, it is this: Do not copy New Orleans.

Buras, now a professor of educational policy at Georgia State University, spent ten years researching this book. She describes fully the policy terrain: the Bush administration’s desire to turn Katrina-devastated New Orleans into a free enterprise zone. The support of New Orleans’ white-dominated business community and of the leadership of Tulane University, for privatization of the schools. Privatization also was encouraged by the Aspen Institute, whose chairman Walter Isaacson (former editor in chief of TIME) was simultaneously chairman of the board of Teach for America. A swarm of market-oriented “reformers” saw a chance to turn New Orleans into a model for the nation. They had no trouble getting tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions, from the federal government and foundations to create the enterprise zone of independently operated charter schools they wanted.

Obstacles were quickly swept away. Some 7,500 veteran teachers, three-quarters of whom were African-American, the backbone of the African-American middle class in New Orleans, were abruptly fired without cause, making room for a new staff of inexperienced young TFA recruits. Public schools were soon eliminated, even those that were beloved in their communities, some with fabled histories and vibrant ties to the neighborhood.

Buras relates the troubled history of New Orleans, with its background of white supremacy and the disempowerment of African Americans, whether enslaved or free. She recoils at the accusation that black teachers were somehow responsible for the poor condition and poor academic results of the public schools of New Orleans before Katrina. She documents that those in power in the state systematically underfunded the schools until the charters came; then the money spigot opened.

Reviewing this history, and especially the years since the destruction caused by Katrina in 2005, Buras reaches some strong judgments about what happened to New Orleans that ties past to present.

When the new power elites were debating the best way to manage the schools, what became clear was that they distrusted local school boards as “politicized and ineffective,” and preferred either state control, mayoral control or appointed leadership. Behind their models was the Reconstruction-era assumption that “African Americans have no capacity for self-government.”

“Whether in terms of how [charter] boards are constituted or in terms of how student or familial challenges are addressed, the charter school movement in New Orleans is closely bound to the protection of whiteness as property, as the clearest beneficiaries are upper-class white (and a few black) entrepreneurs who seek to capitalize on public assets for their own advancement while dispossessing the very communities the schools are supposed to serve.”

Buras tells the counter-stories of community-supported public schools that resisted the charterization process. One chapter is devoted to Frrederick Douglass High School, the heart of the Bywater neighborhood in the city’s Upper 9th Ward. It opened in 1913 as an all-white school named for a Confederate general who was Reconstruction governor of Louisiana after the Civil War. With desegregation in the late 1960s, white flight commenced, and it eventually became an all-black school. Not until the 1990s was it renamed for abolitionist Frederick Douglass. As Buras shows, the local African American community tried to save the school, which was important to the neighborhood, but it was eventually handed over to KIPP.

Buras points out that most of the charter schools did not hire veteran teachers, and none has a union. They prefer to rely on the fresh recruits, “most of them white and from outside the community.” After Katrina, she writes, state officials and education entrepreneurs shifted the blame for poor academic results onto the city’s veteran teachers. She quotes Chas Roemer, currently the chair of the state education board, as saying “Charter schools are now a threat to the jobs program called public education.” (Roemer’s sister heads the state’s charter school association.) Buras concludes that his remark echoes the old racist view that African Americans are shiftless and lazy and dependent on state welfare. She counters that teachers in New Orleans before Katrina contended with “racism and a history of state neglect of black public schools.” Several teachers told her of the unfit conditions of the schools in which they taught. They did not have access to the bounty that arrived in the city for charter schools.

Beneath the chatter about a New Orleans “miracle,” Buras sees the unfolding of a narrative in which whites once again gain power to control the children of African American families and take possession of schools that once belonged to the black community and reflected their culture and their aspirations.

“Knowingly or unknowingly,” she writes, inexperienced white recruits with TFA undermine the best interests of black working-class students and veteran teachers to leverage a more financially stable and promising future for themselves.” Buras is especially scornful of TFA, which she holds culpable for treating its recruits as “human capital,” while helping to dismantle democratic institutions and take the place of unjustly fired black teachers.

In the end, she offers up her book as a warning to urban districts like Philadelphia, Newark, Detroit, Indianapolis, Nashville, and others that New Orleans is not a model for anyone to follow. The entrepreneurs grow fat while families and children lose schools that once were the heart of their community. Schools are not just a place to produce test scores (and the evidence from the New Orleans-based “Research on Reforms” shows that New Orleans’ Recovery School District is one of the state’s lowest performing districts). Schools have civic functions as well. They are, or should be, democratic institutions, serving the needs of the local community and responsive to its goals. Schooling is not something done to children, but a process in which children learn about the world, develop their talents, and become independent, self-directed individuals and citizens.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, New Orleans, Privatization, Teach for America

Charter Schools in New York Sue for More Money

By dianeravitch
September 22, 2014 //
20

You probably don’t remember the claims made by charter advocates when they were starting this dual system of schools; they said they could get better results for less money, which would be a huge cost savings for taxpayers.

 

As we have seen in state after state, charters usually get worse results than public schools, except when they cherry pick the students they want and kick out the ones with low scores.

 

Better results for less money? Forget about it.

 

Charter operators in New York are suing for more money, saying that it is not fair that public schools get more money. The parent plaintiffs are from Buffalo and Rochester. You would think that with their capacity to tap hedge fund managers for millions, they would be satisfied to let public schools–which have larger proportions of students with disabilities and English language learners–get the money they need for the students they enroll.

 

Ed Justice Newsblast – Charter Operators Want More Money in New York

 

 

CHARTER OPERATORS WANT MORE MONEY IN NEW YORK
September 22, 2014
Similar Lawsuits Expected in Other States

 

On September 15, 2014, the Northeast Charter Schools Network (NECSN) and charter parents filed a lawsuit against the State of New York, seeking more taxpayer support for charter schools, specifically for facilities.

The lawsuit, Brown v. New York, which was filed in Buffalo, claims the funding system used by the State to allocate money to charter schools violates the state constitution. The plaintiffs argue　that the state funding formula denies children enrolled in charter schools access to a “sound basic education,” as required by the New York State Constitution. Additionally, they allege that the funding scheme has a disproportionate and discriminatory impact on minority students.

The parent plaintiffs are from Buffalo and Rochester and are represented by Herrick, Feinstein LLP, Park Avenue, New York, NY.

As reported in the Rochester City Newspaper, the Alliance for Quality Education, a statewide group that advocates for high quality public education for all New York students, issued a statement calling the suit a “deceptive PR stunt.” “Despite the fact that public schools are severely underfunded, Wall Street-backed charter school groups continue to use aggressive propaganda to win more public school dollars,” the statement asserts.

The plaintiffs ask the court to issue an injunction and a declaratory judgment that the State’s funding scheme violates the Equal Protection and Education Clauses of the New York Constitution and discriminates on the basis of race.

As reported in the Hartford Courant, one of the co-founders of NECSN, Michael Sharpe, falsified his academic credentials, resigned from leadership of a charter school organization, and was convicted of embezzling public funds years earlier.

In North Carolina and Washington, DC, charter school organizations filed cases seeking additional public funding. And, Connecticut, because NECSN is active there, could anticipate a similar suit. It bears watching to see if charter organizations take similar actions in other states.

 

Related Stories:
Charters and “Choice” Increase Segregation and Reduce Achievement for Students in North Carolina

 
Education Justice Press Contact:
Molly A. Hunter, Esq.
Director, Education Justice
email: mhunter@edlawcenter.org
voice: 973 624-1815 x19
http://www.edlawcenter.org
http://www.educationjustice.org

Copyright © 2014 Education Law Center. All Rights Reserved.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

For-Profit College Chain Collapsing in Debt, Scandal

By dianeravitch
September 22, 2014 //
15

Politico reports this morning that the giant for-profit charter chain Corinthian College is in deep financial trouble and is under criminal investigation as well:

“MORE CORINTHIAN INQUIRIES: Corinthian Colleges is facing two more criminal investigations, the dismantling for-profit giant reported in an SEC filing late Friday [http://bit.ly/1mwDAFi]. The company disclosed a federal grand jury subpoena in Florida related to employee misconduct and the return of student aid funds, plus one in Georgia requesting information on job placement, admissions, attendance and graduation rates. The subpoenas follow last week’s news that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is suing the company for nearly $569 million over an “illegal predatory lending scheme: http://1.usa.gov/1oW68U3”

For a real eye-opener, read the charges made against this for-profit corporation by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This “illegal predatory lending scheme” is stunning in its scope. The administration and Congress should regulate these predatory institutions or put them out of business. Unfortunately, Congress has held off because the industry hired the top lobbyists from both parties to fight needed regulation. If it were up to me, I would ban for-profit education, including for-profit charter schools and colleges. Many, most, are worthless diploma mills whose purpose is profit, not education. Why urge young people to get a diploma when the choices include places like this one?

Categories Education Industry, For-Profit, Higher Education

Ohio: Does Public Property Belong to Public or to Charter Organization?

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2014 //
6

This note of alarm comes from Denis Smith, a retired consultant in the Ohio Department of Education’s charter school office:

 

 
On Tuesday, September 23, the Ohio Supreme Court will hear arguments in the notorious White Hat Management case, where the boards of 10 charter schools operated by White Hat Management have sued the operator to assert their right to control the physical assets of the schools. White Hat says that since it is the operator, all tangible property (student and office furniture, equipment, books and supplies) belongs to the company, while the boards maintain that the assets belong to the individual schools.

 

If White Hat wins, this means that upon the closure of any of these charter schools, the operator can sell or auction off this property and maintain the proceeds rather than returning the funds to the state through the normal liquidation process for public proerty.

 

What is disgraceful is that Ohio’s chief legal officer, Attorney General Mike DeWine, has failed to file an amicus brief on behalf of the Ohio Department of Education, and therefore has decided not to join the argument that the property, bought with state funds, belongs to the public rather than the company.

 

But what is even more disgraceful is that only the Ohio School Boards Association has filed an amicus brief in the case, supporting the schools’ contention that the company has no right to these physical assets purchased with state tax funds.

 

So the questions are:
Where is the Ohio Education Association in this case?
Where is the Ohio Federation of Teachers in this case?
Where is the Buckeye Association of School Administrators?
Where is the Ohio Association of Elementary School Administrators?
Where is the Ohio Association of Secondary School Administrators?
Where is the Ohio Association of School Business Officials?
Where is Ohio ASCD?
If you belong to any of these organizations, would you consider calling them tomorrow or contacting them TODAY via email to find out why they are AWOL in this case that affects the very future of public education?

 

When I found out about all of these organizations being AWOL after being on the road for two weeks, I was outraged. I hope you might be as well. Needless to say, White Hat has the support of several charter school organizations in this case, but public education organizations, save the Ohio School Boards Association, are absent.

 

This is absolutely shameful.

 

What are professional dues for? What is the reason these organizations exist?

 

If you’re not outraged about this, you haven’t been paying attention. To sin by silence when we should protest makes cowards of all of us in the education community.

 

http://www.dispatch.com/content/blogs/the-daily-briefing/2014/08/08.25.2014-animus-about-amicus.html

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2014/09/09/Pepper_on_charter_schools.html

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Ohio, Privatization
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