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Momma Bears of Tennessee Salute a Valiant Teacher

By dianeravitch
February 27, 2014 //
13

The Momma Bears are one of the potent forces that will drive the corporate-style reformers out of business.

You see, the Momma Bears are not in it for the money or the fame or the power or the control.

They are Mamma Bears, and they don’t back down. They protect their cubs.

They don’t particularly care whether Arne Duncan calls them names or whether the Governor likes them.

They are in it for their children, and (as we say in the South) they ain’t giving up or going away.

In this post, they single out a teacher who told parents the truth about what the state was doing to their children.

They know this teacher is on their side and on the side of their children. He wants to teach, not test. Imagine that!

Who imposed all this testing on these kids? They know:

You can thank these people for this asinine TVAAS evaluation system:

  • TN Board of Education (appointed by Gov. Haslam)
  • TN Commissioner Kevin Huffman (appointed by Gov. Haslam)
  • Governor Haslam (who sent his kids to private schools that didn’t excessively test or rate teachers by test scores)
  • William Sanders (the statistician who came up with this awful system to rate agricultural growth and somehow it is now it is being used to abuse teachers)

The Mamma Bears know that all this testing doesn’t help their children.

They know that it helps Pearson!

If their child fails, guess what they get? More testing!

These are smart Mamma Bears. They will be there after the name Bill Haslam and Kevin Huffman are long forgotten.

You see, there is justice in the world.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Parents, Tennessee, Testing

Paul Horton: Common Core Standards Are Not About Education but About Profits

By dianeravitch
February 27, 2014 //
92

The next time that a supporter of the Common Core standards says there are no critics on the left, tell them to read this post by Paul Horton.

Arne Duncan says that the opposition to the Common Core standards emanate from the Tea Party and other rightwing extremists. The media have bought that line, and in some states it is surely true.

But recently the media have noticed that the Common Core has outspoken critics on the left, even though they can’t understand why anyone on the left would oppose standards that allegedly produce equity, excellence, critical thinking, and everything good.

Paul Horton is one of the nation’s most articulate and eloquent opponents of the Common Core standards.  Paul Horton teaches history at the University of Chicago Lab School. He is not a member of the Tea Party; he does not wear a tin foil hat. He is a serious and well-informed teacher.

In this post (which is behind an Education Week paywall), he argues that the purpose of the Common Core standards is to generate profits for business and deskill teachers. He argues that the Common Core standards are essential to the long-term strategy of leaders in business-industry-and-government to eliminate unions, to replace experienced teachers with Teach for America, and to hand public schools over to private management. The driving force, he maintains, is corporate greed.

He insists that the best thing to do with the CCSS is to eliminate it.

He writes:

It has become increasingly clear to me that the Common Core is not about the Common Core and that CBS is not a news network, but a new mindset created by corporate honchos who want to exploit Computer Business Systems to de-skill white- collar professions to break unions and lower wages.

To the extent that teaching and the medical professions, for example, can be scripted and digitalized in measurable units, efficiency targets can demand less human interaction and “time theft.”

This is the brave new world that Simon Head describes in his recently published, Mindless: Why Smarter Machines are Making Dumber Humans. Can you guess? You got it, profit! We have been focusing on Common Core like lonely young men focus on Mona Lisa’s smile. Common Core is like the tip of the iceberg on the surface: it has become the reified image of a global crisis that most of us can not quite get our minds around.

He adds:

But while the corporate-funded technocrats of the Democratic party are pushing their education policies down the throats of as many Americans as they can, inspiring more mobilization from the right, what is left of the union-supported Populist wing of the party is steaming mad. The Tea Party has been successful in its Grover Norquist inspired strangulation of government at all levels, and the Democratic Party is cooperating with corporate-led attempts to break public unions. The Obama administration has gone after teacher unions with a vengeance.

According to Head, most Americans can’t see the big picture because “CBSs (Computer Business Systems) are the semi-discovered black holes of the contemporary economy.” (3) He argues that Information technology is creating income inequality by driving down wages in the white-collar professions that could not be previously “Taylorized.” “By making us dumber, smart machines also diminish our earning power.” (3) In other words my doctor and I face the same set of issues: as machines and algorithms take over, our work can be divided into units and our efficiency can be statistically measured. We are in the same boat as weavers who worked the “putting out” system in the late eighteenth century—they were paid for each piece produced. In other words, corporate bosses are trying to push teachers, doctors, and all white collar-service workers into a work structure that is increasingly deskilled to justify lowering salaries and benefits, busting unions and professional organizations, increase productivity, and forcing all white collar workers to compete through the use of digitalized efficiency reports and student and student test data banks. This data will be shared with consulting firms like McKinsey to evaluate potential and current employees world wide. Troublemakers, union organizers, and those with low productivity and test scores will be funneled into the lowest-paying service jobs.

And he concludes:

The reason Mr. Gates and Mr. Duncan become very upset when states want to drop the Common Core, PARCC, data collection, or standardized testing is that all of these components are required by CBS. Pearson Education, a British company that gave ninety-four percent of its campaign contributions to the Obama campaign, is working with Microsoft and InBloom to scale up data collection. All of these companies are scaling up the de-skilling of the education workplace and they are breaking what is considered learning down to discrete, easily measured units. The global teaching profession at the school and university levels is being set up for work speed-ups with productivity gains going to management and investors. Assessment data for all teachers will be stored to determine salaries based on effectiveness as measure by student test scores. Students will also have their data collected and evaluated at each stage of their academic and professional careers. Based on McKinsey’s model of employment disruption, CBS and data analysis will be used to force white-collar employees to compete with employees around the world. Layoffs will be frequent to motivate greater productivity….

 

The Common Core deskills the teaching profession by turning the teaching into a delivery machine. Relationships with students are to be ignored and replaced by the mechanical delivery of scripted lessons in a particular sequence. In effect, the teacher craftsman will be forced to work on an assembly line. Evaluations will be based on a standard Charlotte Danielson rubric that has its origins in Kaplan’s “Balanced Scorecard” and “Value Added Measures” based on student test scores….

 

Understanding Common Core is about seeing a much larger picture. That picture is a collage of the strategic plans of most multinational corporations that are increasingly managed or heavily influenced by the CBS approach to business and labor relations. What the Tea Party erroneously views as the socialistic overreach of the Obama Administration is in reality the administration’s acquiescence to the power of multi-nationals that are pushing the CBS imperative to de-skill and destroy what is left of the American and global skilled white-collar middle-class.

The corporate-owned major editorial boards and television media refuse to report the big picture. They will focus on Glenn Beck’s ignorant bloviating about the Common Core to throw “reasonable people” who read the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal off the real story: corporate greed….

We need to discard every element of the Race to the Top including the Common Core because RTTT is a very different animal than state curriculum standards. The global economy has changed since the mid 80s when states were coordinating education policy reforms. RTTT is the handmaiden of multinational corporations that want to bust unions to capture productivity gains. This might be ok if they planned on sharing some of those gains with a hard-working workforce as Adam Smith believed should happen. The global reality of growing income inequality should serve as a wake-up call to our education unions.

 

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

YES! Reaching the Public with “The Myth of Our Failing Schools”

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2014 //
111

YES! Magazine devotes a special issue to public education and its findings  will not surprise readers of this blog.

The lead article by executive editor Dean Paton is “The Myth Behind Public School Failure,” demonstrating that our public schools are NOT failing. Here is the line that follows the title:

“In the rush to privatize the country’s schools, corporations and politicians have decimated school budgets, replaced teaching with standardized testing, and placed the blame on teachers and students.”

There is also a powerful infographic titled “Why Corporations Want Our Public Schools.”

The answer will not surprise you.

The important point about YES! is that the message about the theft of our public schools is reaching a larger public.

This is good news.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Breaking News: New Data Show High Expulsion Rates from Charter Schools in Chicago

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2014 //
34

Mayor Rahm Emanuel once praised the Noble network of charter schools in Chicago as having a “secret sauce” for success. Part of its “secret sauce” was fining students $5 for every disciplinary infraction. Some families owed the school hundreds or even thousands of dollars. That was one way of pushing out difficult students. It works. But that’s not all.

A new report from Chicago Public Schools shows that one important ingredient of the secret sauce is expulsions. It makes perfect sense. If a school can kick out the kids with low scores, the school will have higher scores and the public school that gets the low-scoring kids will have lower scores. How simple! Charter advocates like to say that public schools should copy the successful strategies of the charter schools. Now, if the Chicago public schools learn from the charters, who will take those kids? Ideas?

As it continues to modify strict disciplinary policies in an effort to keep students in the classroom, Chicago Public Schools on Tuesday released data showing privately run charter schools expel students at a vastly higher rate than the rest of the district.

The data reveal that during the last school year, 307 students were kicked out of charter schools, which have a total enrollment of about 50,000. In district-run schools, there were 182 kids expelled out of a student body of more than 353,000.

That means charters expelled 61 of every 10,000 students while the district-run schools expelled just 5 of every 10,000 students.

It’s the first time the district has released student suspension data for every school and also the first time it has released data on expulsions for charters. For charter critics, the numbers will buttress long-standing complaints that the privately run operations push out troubled students, allowing their schools to record stronger academic performances.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Eva Moskowitz Plans to Fight Mayor de Blasio in Albany

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2014 //
136

Eva Moskowitz, the combative CEO of the Success Academy charter school chain (previously called Harlem Success Academy), anticipates that new Mayor Bill de Blasio may charge rent for her use of public space or may deny some of the co-locations offered in the waning days of the Bloomberg administration. Moskowitz enjoyed preferential treatment when Michael Bloomberg was mayor and had immediate access to Chancellor Joel Klein. Those days are over, as de Blasio has pledged to review all future co-locations and to consult with local communities.

Moskowitz issued a statement promising to take her battle for more schools and more funding to Albany, where she has friends in the Legislature and in Governor Cuomo. According to a report by Geoffrey Decker in Chalkbeat, charter advocates–some of whom are on the board of Eva’s chain–have contributed more than $800,000 to Cuomo. Eva will bring busloads of students to Albany with her to impress the Legislature, something that no public school would be permitted to do. In addition, a charter advocacy group called Families for Excellent Schools will mount a multi-million dollar TV campaign to block de Blasio’s efforts to rein in the charter movement.

Charters in New York City enroll 6% of the pupil population. Many have smaller proportions of students with disabilities and English language learners than public schools, and some charters are known for suspending or expelling students they don’t want, then not accepting new students to take their places.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, New York City, Privatization

New Jersey: Time to Investigate Christie Administration’s Failed Reforms

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2014 //
9

Jim O’Neill, interim superintendent of West Orange, New Jersey, did something remarkable, something we expect from retired educators, not those in the field. He spoke up. He denounced the failed reforms of the Christie administration whose purpose is not to improve education but to open up the school budget for privatization. For his courage and candor, based on experience and wisdom, he joins the honor roll as a hero of public education.

Time for an investigation, he writes:

“The Bridgegate investigation led from Fort Lee to Hoboken, the Hunterdon County Sheriff’s Office, Sandy ads, Sandy funds and the ARC tunnel. After four years of being intimidated by the crass talking intimidator-in-chief, our elected representatives and investigative journalists have their mojo back and should hurry to investigate the highly touted education reforms in NJ. Articulated and spearheaded by a private school advocate clothed in the powers of state education commissioner, the soon to be departed Chris Cerf leaves NJ teachers and students suffering from a debilitating hangover.

“Cerf learned from our governor that, if you say the same thing often enough, say it forcefully enough and demonize all those who raise a hand to disagree, you will attract attention and true believers. The naysayers were painted as out of date fat cat public employees only interested in themselves and not the health, welfare, or academic well-being of the students in our schools. Fortunately for the parents of over one million students in NJ public schools, nothing could be further from the truth.

“The reforms foisted on NJ and other states lack intellectual credibility because the advocates refuse to entertain alternate ideas or facts. The “we know we are right” attitude confirms an insular mentality and a deep-seated insecurity, which also blinded those in the governor’s circle of trust. Platitudes about closing failing schools and all children succeeding are the public catch phrases of a political agenda masquerading as education reforms.”

Read on.

Categories Education Industry, Honor Roll, New Jersey

Obama Invites Dr. James Comer to Join Advisory Panel

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2014 //
32

This is really good news.

President Obama appointed famed Yale child psychologist Dr. James Comer to join an advisory panel, where he will be

 

“one of 15 appointees to a new President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for African Americans.

The commission is tasked with “improving educational outcomes for African Americans to ensure that all African Americans receive an education that prepares them for college, productive careers, and satisfying lives.”

Comer said he will stress to the committee the central importance of child development in helping disadvantaged minority kids succeed.

“The modern school reform movement that focuses on math and reading,” Comer said, “misses what schools are about. Schools are to prepare students to be successful in life.”

 

Dr. Comer has devoted his career to helping children by focusing on their social and emotional development and their relationship to their family and community.

He is not an admirer of the punitive stress of high-stakes testing, which harms children’s development. Dr. Comer understands that Race to the Top ignores what matters most in healthy child development.

Here is hoping that the President and his advisors take the sage advice of Dr. Comer.

Categories Education Industry, Students, Testing

The Vergara Case and Other People’s Children: A Teacher’s View

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2014 //
31

The Vergara trial in Los Angeles prompted this National Board Certified Teacher to reflect on the power dynamics in LAUSD. And how it affects the students. The trial is funded by a very wealthy tech entrepreneur whose legal team claims that due process rights for teachers denies the civil rights of minority students because it is harder to fire teachers if they get a hearing. Superintendent John Deasy testified for the plaintiffs who are suing his districts because he says he can’t fire ineffective teachers.

The classroom teacher wrote this commentary on the trial and the issues:

“The Vergara case is truly the epicenter of everything wrong with the direction of American public education.

“Sorry in advance for this long post, but this case connects a lot of dots…from my classroom in Los Angeles…to Wall Street…to The White House.

“The words in this case are twisted in Orwellian ways, where a term like “Civil Rights” gets to be used by the oppressors instead of those trying to liberate kids from their dictums.

“Teaching in the Los Angeles Unified School District is an exercise in futility these days. Watching this court case unfold with its Trojan Horse arguments about the best education for students is like hearing the 1% argue that what the financial system needs is less regulation so that the poor people of the country can be free to achieve their American Dream.

“Their words are all about “liberty” and “justice” and “equality”, but it is obvious who reaps the benefits of those terms.

“It is no coincidence that our District Superintendent John Deasy, was the first witness called to testify against the teachers of his own district.

“He knew that he had the backing of the very rich benefactors who have paved his life in education. He keeps winning because there is no realistic way to challenge his authority.

“The Editorial Board of the LA TIMES, like the Editorial Boards of papers like The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Chicago Tribune are enamored by this sort of superintendent–a man who is brought in to kick teachers’ whining butts and bring up test scores. The cosmetic nature of HOW they do it is apparent to anyone who looks at it.

“They have lowered graduation requirements and (as in our school) have brought in empty BS “Advisory” classes that the kids can get full credit for attending (that’s 40 additional credits after four years!!!) so that graduation rates can be boosted. No one is going to do an in depth analysis of this because the public wants results! Arne Duncan can give a big hooray for Deasy and company because the graduation figures are going up! Numbers don’t lie!

“Are our kids “smarter” because John Deasy is our superintendent? No. The pedagogy that Deasy believes in is small-minded and literal. If a teacher in LA is doing great things in his or her classroom, the chances are it’s IN SPITE of the District, not because of it. The only true education emphasis that Deasy champions is the same one that most of the 1% from Bill Gates to Barack Obama to Arne Duncan adhere to: Get the most kids through the education factory they oversee (and often profit from) towards the goal of making them somewhat competent in the world to not go out and steal. It is a very low bar. Very few schools and administrations treat education as a mind-blowing, explosive and subversive experience. That would be about the last thing on John Deasy’s agenda.

“For Deasy and those who back him, Education is defined by them alone, using their own, limited metrics about what they think constitutes “education”.

“For Deasy’s system, creative teaching is seen only as an added bonus–not a primary function. If it happens, great, but it is not the most important aspect of education. Creativity and the emphasis on a critical understanding of the world is not the thing the system values most. Deasy, Duncan, Gates and Pearson value kids responding to its metrics. Actually, if those metrics are achieved, then the Education System says the “product” is successfully educated.

“The truth is that the System will NEVER get the results from this urban population of kids (or for most others either) because they neglect to deal with a variety of factors: Poverty, environment, lack of parental wherewithal, economic forces that dictate a certain path for the working class that Deasy oversees.

“But Deasy’s route to “success” was vastly different from that likely of the students he oversees. In fact, ironically, his path was much more “American” in its orchestration of how the country actually works: Inheritance, privilege and obsequiousness. Although most people are tired of hearing about Deasy’s PhD “controversy” (http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/education/blog/2008/10/prince_georges_says_goodbye_to.html) it is always worth remembering because it is a perfect metaphor for how Deasy has always gotten his way throughout his entire education life. With the tremendous support of a financial power structure that has bolstered his career from Day One, Deasy has been the beneficiary of those whose interests he promotes. First it was the financial interests of billionaires Bill Gates and later Eli Broad which morph conveniently into the political interests of the neo-liberal Democrat agenda.

“Brought in and imposed upon the city by former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Deasy consolidated his support by having Eli Broad pony up millions into LAUSD to “buy” support for him. Deasy has enjoyed the unfaltering support of The United Way, the Chamber of Commerce, multi-millionaire Jamie Alter-Lynton’s LA SCHOOL REPORT and The LA Times…behind these entities are all men and women of great wealth who have thrown their considerable influence backing Deasy’s “Reform” Agenda but do not send their own kids to LAUSD. Our current Mayor Eric Garcetti is a product of the UCLA Lab School and the tony Harvard Westlake Prep (as Mayor Emmanuel sends his kids to University of Chicago Lab where the Obama kids also attended).

“No matter.

“Like many other inner cities with very separate education agendas for other people’s children, these socially-liberal Titans of LA Power pull the strings for a school system that is both racist and classist. The type of education that Deasy prescribes for the kids of LAUSD would never go over in his former school district of Santa Monica. Educated, mostly white and financially secure parents would not tolerate the low bar for their own kids. They would not tolerate the class size that our students endure and are supposed to “buck up” and learn in, nor the pitiful lack of electives, art, drama or field trip opportunities.

“As for LAUSD teachers? Most suffer in silence. Our system’s teachers are cowed and intimidated. Where do they look for support? How did they become the enemy? Hundreds of teachers in “jail” in LA. Deasy gets a 91% disapproval rating from the very people he leads and it doesn’t garner a shrug. Imagine if the Secretary of Defense got that rating from the troops or any municipal Police Chief from the officers on the street? There would be calls for firing immediately, but teachers are demonized and can be ignored. Everyone from Obama to Bill Gates to Arne Duncan gives lip service to “WE LOVE TEACHERS!” but it is in much the same way as Colonel Sanders LOVES his chickens.

“Only a neo-liberal, corporatist agenda could get a piece of agitprop like the anti-union teacher film WON’T BACK DOWN at the last Democratic Convention. Wall Street loves people like Arne Duncan and John Deasy and Barack Obama. No matter that these people never had any experience in public urban education before they rose to power, they have sought to undermine teachers and student opportunities at every level.

“They have no shame of putting my students in a real-life movie that actually SUBVERTS their interests. They will back law suits like Vergara v. California stating its “for the kids”. Deasy will claim that his teachers are the problem, instead of the social issues that hold students’ lives in their sway. Ghastly, Deasy then claims that its HIS OWN self-serving, self-aggrandizing, self-benefiting educational policies (and those of Gates, Broad, Pearson, et. al) that are the life preservers for the kids.

“Our kids are afloat in a desperate sea and the “rescue” ship they send is manned by cannibals.

“The LAUSD School Board is a feckless lot. It is too much inside baseball to go into the individual psychologies of the seven members. Suffice to say they read the newspapers and are always VERY concerned how they appear to the editorial boards who keep them in line. Education is political and its big business. To say otherwise is ignorant at best and downright disingenuous at worst. I do not hold out much hope for this sorry lot because they are all in over their heads.

“Without rehashing the iPad story, LA’s citizens got upset because they saw it as a ridiculous waste of their money–while teachers saw it as horrifying waste of resources and priorities. We were told by our leader, Deasy, that iPads were a Civil Rights issue which was met with universal derision. We are now forced to figure out some way of threading the needle of asking the public to actually give MORE to public education which actually IS a Civil Rights issue, but it has been polluted by Deasy’s “version” of Civil Rights. When our own district stabs us in the back, undercutting our desire to make the public understand what the system truly needs, then what hope do we have to actually do right by our kids?

“John Deasy, Bill Gates, Arne Duncan and Barack Obama have miserably failed all urban kids. Their education is a disaster for my students. But the people who have the influence and power to change it don’t realize it (charitably?) or they simply BELIEVE the “philanthropists” when they say something is true and necessary because they also NEED those people for their political survival. And they get their backing because they back them. And so on and so on and so on….

“To connect the dots even further in this depressing spirit, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) has announced that Bill Gates will be a keynote speaker at their 2014 Teaching and Learning conference next month. As a National Board teacher, I am horrified by this entity that is supposed to recognize the excellence in teaching is becoming just a shill front. Education is political and the National Board steadfastly refuses to acknowledge the destruction of public education. In fact, Gates has given so much money to this organization that it has created a toxic influence in the organization, reducing the “reliability” of what National Board constitutes great teaching.

“My disenfranchised classroom loses out simply because we can’t buy our way into a seat at the table.

“My kids can’t “buy” their way into a PhD.

“My kids have to accept what Deasy and The LA Times tells them is necessary for them.

“Who is our court of appeal in this system?

“Vergara v. California is the rich’s power grab. American public education is on trial not by “the people” but by the oligarchs who use it as a punching board to misdirect the culpability of many of these elites in creating the societal pathologies these kids navigate everyday.

“The true enemy of the nine students whose names are cynically being used in the suit are not their teachers–but those who exploit their desire for a true education–and will replace their trust with fat bank accounts in someone else’s name at a desk very far away (and with a much better window view) than theirs at the school’s they originally came from.”

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Broad Foundation, California, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Graduation rates, Los Angeles, Students

Help These Kids Go to Finland!

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2014 //
15

A friend passed along this email.

What an awesome threesome!

The Boston Consulting Group (whose reports always recommend privatization, as in Philadelphia); the Harvard Business School; and the Gates Foundation.

Lots of bright young men and women, probably graduates of our finest private schools. They will redesign public education for other people’s children. They need some good ideas.

I propose they take a field trip to Finland. There they will see happy, healthy children; no standardized testing; strong academic and vocational-technical programs; and a well-prepared, highly respected teaching profession.

What are the metrics? That will be their challenge!

Time for fresh thinking! Time to break the mold! Abandon the status quo of high-stakes testing and privatization!

Here goes:

“As part of an effort to improve the competitiveness of the United States, BCG has partnered with Harvard Business School and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to bring business and education leaders together to better understand how they can collaborate and transform America’s PK-12 education system.

“The BCG-Gates-HBS PK-12 research focuses on best practices for partnerships between business leaders and educators to accelerate improvement in America’s schools. The research has identified three high-leverage ways in which business leaders can engage with educators to bring about significant change for the better:

* Laying the policy foundations for education innovation
* Scaling up proven innovations that boost student outcomes
* Reinventing the local education ecosystem in cities and regions

“It is our pleasure to share with you two joint research reports on these important topics. We hope the first report, Lasting Impact: A Business Leader’s Playbook for Supporting America’s Schools, will inspire business and education leaders to work together on the urgent task of transforming the nation’s education system. The second report, Partial Credit: How America’s School Superintendents See Business as a Partner, summarizes the findings of a nationwide survey of school superintendents on business’s role in education.

“In 2014, we aim to spur action on many of the ideas that have been captured in the research so far. We welcome your thoughts and input on the material.

Best regards,

J. Puckett
Leader, Global Education Practice Tyce Henry
Principal
Nithya Vaduganathan
Principal

The Boston Consulting Group”

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

Another Anti-Charter Petition in New Jersey: Will Chris Cerf Do the Right Thing as He Leaves?

By dianeravitch
February 24, 2014 //
8

A group of superintendents in New Jersey drafted a petition to Commissioner of Education Chris Cerf, asking him to block the expansion of the Hatikvah Charter School.

The charter school has consistently been underenrolled. It plans to expand by drawing students and funds from their districts, impoverishing their already struggling public schools.

A decision is likely by Friday.

Will State Commissioner Chris Cerf do the right thing?

 

 

To:

Commissioner Christopher Cerf

New Jersey Department of Education

Judge Robert L. Carter Building

100 Riverview Plaza

PO Box 500

Trenton, NJ 08625-0500

February 21, 2014

We, the below signed Superintendents, write to request that you deny the expansion request submitted to your office on October 15, 2013 as part of the Hatikvah International Academy Charter School Application for Charter School Renewal.

Hatikvah has proposed not only the creation of a grade 6-8 Middle School, but also an increase from the current two to a proposed three classes of 25 students per grade in grades K-5. If approved, the Middle School would add an additional 150 students, and the additional class in grades K-5 would add yet another 150 students. This would double Hatikvah’s maximum 2013-14 enrollment of 273 students, to a maximum 2018-19 enrollment of 600 students. An expansion request in their 2018 Renewal Application for an additional 75 seats in grades 6-8 is also likely, which would bring Hatikvah’s ultimate enrollment projection to 675 students.

Since opening in 2010, Hatikvah has failed to fill their seats with students from East Brunswick, the only district they are approved to serve. As demonstrated in the October 15, 2013 Enrollment Count, they currently serve 263 students from 21 districts in 6 counties. In essence, due to a lack of sufficient interest in East Brunswick to fill enrollment, Hatikvah has become a de-facto statewide charter school.

It should be noted that, as of the October 15, 2013 Enrollment Count, Hatikvah was under enrolled, and had filled only 263 out of the 273 seats their charter allows. How can an expansion be justified when Hatikvah is unable to fill seats in all grades, even with the inclusion of students from 21 districts?

In fact, Hatikvah’s enrollment shows that a mere 57% of Hatikvah’s students reside in East Brunswick. This puts 43% of the funding burden on the other 20 districts across the state, that according to current statute and regulation, received no formal notice of Hatikvah’s expansion request, and have no legal standing in the deliberations or final decision that could adversely effect their budgets.

Hatikvah’s under enrollment, despite recruitment efforts in 21 districts in 6 counties, seems to indicate that the charter has failed to tap into an unmet need, not only in East Brunswick, but the state of New Jersey.

In many of our districts the majority of funding, in some cases close to 90%, comes from local tax dollars. The diversion of these funds, by state mandate, with no input from the local taxpayers, remains an issue of contention. This diversion of funds, coupled with 2% budget caps and continued state underfunding, is particularly challenging.

Also a challenge is the fact that the State Charter School Aid Projected Enrollment Count, used for budget purposes, often varies significantly from the actual October 15 Enrollment Count, forcing districts to either set aside too much money for charter tuition payments, or not enough, but in either case restricting much needed funds from tight budgets.

Finally, we wish to call your attention to the fact that Hatikvah’s student demographics are unlike any of our districts. According to the most recent available state data, Hatikvah is serving significantly fewer minorities, fewer children in poverty, fewer Limited English Proficient children and fewer Special Education children. In fact, Hatikvah serves no LEP students and only 1% of their students are reported as Special Education.

Hatikvah’s 2012-2013 Annual Report addresses the need for more diversity in their charter by stating that their “plan is to increase our recruitment efforts in New Brunswick in order to increase student diversity and the free/reduced lunch population.” In addition, the Hatikvah 2011-12 annual report states that they do not have a lunch program, but that free/reduced lunch students are “provided with a complimentary nutritious entrée by our PTO, 3 days a week.”

We submit for your consideration that Hatikvah has demonstrated an inability to enroll a diverse student population from the diverse districts they already serve, and very well may not be meeting many of the significant needs of some of the students they have enrolled.

Charter regulations clearly state that annually “the Commissioner shall assess the student composition of a charter school and the segregative effect that the loss of the students may have on its district of residence” and that the “annual assessments of student composition of the charter school” will be factored into the renewal of a charter. We respectfully submit that the demographic disparities between our districts and Hatikvah be given significant consideration in your decision.

We are in absolute agreement that the approval of the Hatikvah expansion would be contrary to N.J.S.A. 18A:36A-16(e)(3), as it would have an overall negative impact on the students, staff, parents, educational programs and finances of our districts.

 

Dr. Patrick Piegari

East Brunswick Superintendent

Mr. Timothy Capone

Highland Park Superintendent

Mr. Richard Kaplan

New Brunswick Superintendent

Dr. Brian Zychowski

North Brunswick Superintendent

Dr. Richard O’Malley

Edison Superintendent

Mr. Michael Pfister

South River Superintendent

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, New Jersey, Privatization
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