Archives for category: Education Industry
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Texas: Almost Every New Charter School Is Underenrolled

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2023 //
3

Edward McKinley of the Houston Chronicle reports that demand for charter school seats is lagging in Texas. Open the link to the article to see the enrollment predictions for the 18 new charters and their actual enrollment. The article is not behind a paywall.

Organizations that opened new charter schools in Texas over the last five years frequently overestimated the number of students they would enroll in their early years when making their pitch for state approval, according to a review of statewide data.

Of the 19 schools approved since 2017 that have opened, 18 fell short of their enrollment projections, and 14 were at least 20 percent lower than they estimated. In eight cases, enrollment was at least 60 percent less than the number projected.

In Harris County, for example, Legacy School of Sports Sciences said it planned to have about 1,850 students by this school year, while actual data shows its enrollment was 447. In Bexar County, Royal Public Schools planned for 672 students, while its enrollment was around 200.

Officials at both schools did not respond to a request for comment.

Over the last decade, the Legislature has smoothed the way for charter schools to quickly expand, giving more authority to the Texas Education Agency and taking it away from the state education board and from cities and towns.

From 2017 to 2021, the total number of charter school campuses exploded. Enrollment grew from about 273,000 students to more than 377,000.

But as charter school groups continue to push for more support from the state, the failures of new schools to hit enrollment projections undercuts the argument that there is massive demand.

Members of the state board have grumbled that charter applicants that come before them for approval are offering overly rosy visions of their future or even misleading the board entirely.

At the State Board of Education meeting last month considering the latest new charter school applicants, Member Aicha Davis, D-Dallas, asked why the board should approve a new set of schools when recent ones haven’t performed to their expectations.

“We’ve been approving charter schools every single year, even during COVID years, without really reviewing the success of the charters that we’ve approved,” Davis said in a phone interview. “Almost none of them are anywhere near capacity, so we’re consistently opening new schools even when the existing schools are having problems filling their classrooms.”

Charter school representatives said the projections are often flawed because they come before schools can secure facilities, a major challenge for charter networks that don’t receive state facility funding or local property taxes.

Charter proponents also pointed to the pandemic, during which enrollment at both public and private schools declined. Of late, many local traditional school districts have also fallen short of their enrollment projections.

Under state law, charter schools exist to augment the system of public school districts, which are required to serve every child.

But there’s a long-simmering tension between charters and districts because when a student transfers to a charter, their former district loses out on the associated funding, which averages to about $10,000 per student.

Challenges faced by charter schools

At least some charters treat the estimates more as ceilings than specific goals.

“The enrollment projections for charter applications become your legally binding ceiling,” said Ryan York, a chief executive of The Gathering Place, a technology-focused charter school that opened in San Antonio in 2020. His school’s enrollment projection fell flat by about 14 percent.

“From a process standpoint, there’s a severe penalty if you underestimate, and there’s no penalty if you overestimate,” York said. “You’re going to put a liberal estimate because you don’t want to end up where you have demand and you’re meeting the community’s needs but you aren’t able to meet those needs because you’ve boxed yourself in with the projection.”

According to the TEA, charters on their applications are required to present “realistic and/or justified demographic projections.”

After approval, the schools wait a year before opening, known as the “planning year,” where they acquire property, hire staff and start recruiting students. It’s true that the projections form a basis for a “ceiling,” but the actual enrollment cap isn’t set until this time.

Brian Whitley, spokesman for the Texas Public Charter Schools Association, said the projections included in the applications are “very preliminary.”

“Individual public charter schools don’t have a crystal ball,” he wrote in an email. “They know, when they apply, that demand exists in a community — but there are many factors and logistical hurdles that impact how much and how quickly they can grow.”

State Board of Education Member Tom Maynard, R-Florence, said the charter school applicants that come before the board are giving a sales pitch.

“They come in there and they’re probably being a little bit optimistic,” he said. “I think that moving forward that’s probably going to be something that we’re going to think about a little bit more. … The data analysis is going to have to probably get a little bit more sophisticated.”

In the last seven years, 39 of the 190 organizations that have applied to the TEA to open a new charter school have been approved, or 20 percent. In a key choke point in the process — and the only time when an elected body or official weighs in — the state board has the ability to veto those applicants. In all, 26 organizations received final approval, a rate of about 14 percent.

After schools receive approval, they don’t need to go back to the state board for permission to expand, even if it’s outside of their original locations within the state. After a new application and a review from TEA staff, the only requirement is a signoff from the TEA commissioner, who is appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott — an ardent supporter of charter schools and of using vouchers to subsidize private education.

Although only 18 new charter groups were approved between 2017 and 2021, the number of charter campuses increased during that time from 676 to 872.

‘Very different than what we’ve seen on paper’

Statewide, charter schools enroll a higher percentage of Hispanic or Latino students when compared with traditional public schools. However, based on the statewide data, most new charter schools significantly overestimated the percentages of their student bodies that would be Latino or Hispanic, suggesting many struggle to recruit those students.

Officials from several schools said there may be skepticism among some Latino communities to enroll in new charter schools, which have to work to overcome language barriers or mistrust relating to immigration status. SaJade Miller, superintendent of Rocketship Public Schools in Fort Worth, also suggested that the advocacy network within Black communities — including churches, community centers, groups like the NAACP and others — is more developed, which makes outreach to those students more straightforward.

According to the data, the new charter schools consistently enrolled slightly more Black students than they anticipated.

This year, the state board ultimately voted to approve four of the five charter applicants before them, including Heritage Classical Academy — which had been denied three times previously. The family of Heritage’s president had donated generously to flip several board seats, and the board is now friendlier to charter schools and “school choice” advocates who push for vouchers.

State board Members Maynard and Davis said their key consideration for new charter schools is whether they will offer something innovative that the existing school district does not. They said they’re concerned that schools are painting one picture when they try to win approval from the state — such as opening in one neighborhood instead of another — only to change the plan.

“When we are going through the process of an application and looking at everything, we’re coming from a perspective of what they say they can do,” Davis said. “Then once they open up, a lot of times it’s very different than what we’ve seen on paper.”

Acknowledging that tension, York, with The Gathering Place, said many schools struggle to find a campus when they first open. Enrollment is then often dependent on hyper-specific neighborhood factors, including the other schools nearby and ease of transportation.

It’s a Catch-22, he said: Schools often can’t secure a facility until they have been approved, but they also can’t get approved without a pitch that requires information about geographic details and specific goals.

Correction: A previous version misstated the number of students Legacy School of Sports Sciences projected to have enrolled by this school year. It was 1,850, not 1,450. The estimate was correct in the attached graphic.

Photo of Edward McKinley

Edward McKinley reports on Texas state government and politics from the Hearst Bureau in Austin for the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News. He can be reached at edward.mckinley@houstonchronicle.com.

He is a 2019 graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism and a 2020 graduate of Georgetown’s Master’s in American Government program. He previously reported for The Albany Times Union and the Kansas City Star newspapers, and he originally hails from the great state of Minnesota.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Competition, Deregulation, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, Texas

Houston: Teachers Strong-Armed into Joining Mike Miles’ Reform Plan

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2023 //
5

Josephine Lee of the Texas Observer interviewed teachers in Houston and learned that teachers are being railroaded into joining the plans of state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles.

Lee writes:

In the packed cafeteria of Pugh Elementary School Tuesday evening, Houston Independent School District (HISD) Superintendent Mike Miles worked hard to sell his wholesale campus reform program, called the New Education System (NES), to a resistant crowd, some holding signs that read “Our Children, Our Schools.” Miles boasted that 57 campuses had voluntarily opted into the program.

“They love this,” Miles said. “That’s why teachers at 57 schools volunteered.”

As part of the state’s takeover of HISD—which ousted an elected school board and replaced its leadership with a board of managers and a superintendent handpicked by State Education Commissioner Mike Morath—Miles has previously said that 150 HISD schools would be under the NES by 2025. In March, the Texas Education Agency seized control of HISD, citing past failures to meet state standards at one high school. In addition to the schools that opted in, another 28 were required to participate because the schools are elementary and middle schools with students who “feed into” three high schools with lower accountability ratings.

NES originates from the Third Future Schools, a charter school network Miles founded. It requires teachers to teach from a scripted curriculum. The district will decide campus schedules, staffing, and budgets. Students who are considered disruptive are pulled out of the classroom to attend via Zoom. In addition, Miles has promised teachers support for grading, making copies, small-group instruction, and a stipend of $10,000. Salary schedules for teachers at what he calls “NES-aligned schools,” or those that opted in, will remain the same while teachers at NES-mandated schools receive a salary bump and have to reapply for their jobs. As part of the sweeping changes, last Friday Miles eliminated up to 600 administrative positions from the central office.

Since the Texas Education Agency appointed Miles to lead the school district, he has faced community protests by citizens opposed to the state agency’s takeover. But he has maintained that schools are embracing his changes.

But interviews, email correspondence, and audio recordings of campus meetings that the Texas Observer obtained contradict Miles’ public relations message that there is widespread teacher support for his program. Teachers, parents, and community members from nine of the 57 schools we spoke to said they had no opportunity to weigh in; teachers were threatened with losing their jobs if their campus did not join the program.

“Our hours will change. Our schedules will change. Our curriculum will change. But we have no input in it,” said Michelle Collins, a teacher at DeZavala Elementary School. “Neither do parents.”

According to the state education law, a Shared Decision Making Committee (SDMC) composed of parents, community representatives, teachers, other campus personnel, and a business representative is required to be “involved in decisions in the areas of planning, budgeting, curriculum, staffing patterns, staff development, and school organization.”

While Miles has publicly asked principals to obtain school input, SDMC committee members from five schools in the program confirmed with the Observer that they never met to discuss the issue. SDMC members and teachers from other schools reported that even when they did meet, they did not have a vote in the decision. One teacher said their staff voted not to opt in, but then later saw their school’s name included in the list of 57 schools in the news.

HISD did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Observer will update this article if they do.

In an audio recording of Wainwright Elementary School’s SDMC meeting held July 10 and shared with the Observer, Principal Michelle Lewis told committee members, “If you’re not willing to dive in and do this with us, then this is not the campus for you.” No teacher representatives attended the meeting.

Categories Broad Foundation, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Houston

North Carolina: Vouchers Fund Schools That Discriminate Based on Religion, Disability, LGBT Status

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2023 //
12

Justin Parmenter, a National Board Certified Teacher in North Carolina, is concerned that vouchers in his state will go to private and religious schools that discriminate when they choose their students. Republicans in the Legislature have a super-majority since a teacher elected as a Democrat—Tricia Cotham—betrayed her voters and flipped parties. Republicans ca pass whatever they want without fear of a veto. Would you want your tax money to fund a school that would not accept your own child or one where teachers speak in tongues?

He wrote recently:

As this year’s legislative session hits the homestretch, public education advocates are waiting to see whether proposed changes to North Carolina’s school voucher system become law.

On the House side, brand new Republican Rep. Tricia Cotham sponsored House Bill 823, a bill which would expand funding for vouchers by hundreds of millions of dollars a year until the annual amount going to school vouchers eclipses $500 million in school year 2032-33 and every year thereafter.

In addition to massively increasing funding for vouchers, the proposed legislation eliminates income eligibility requirements so that any student in the state–regardless of financial need–may use public money to attend private schools. That means North Carolina taxpayers will be subsidizing the tuition of wealthy families whose students already attend private schools.

A parallel bill has been filed in the Senate.

Advocates are concerned about the proposed legislation for a variety of reasons. Among them are the continued depletion of resources available to public schools; the relative lack of accountability charter and private schools have, which mean no real way to track return on investment, and; the use of public dollars to support institutions which are legally able to discriminate against children.

Federal civil rights law prohibits discrimination on a variety of grounds for institutions that receive federal funds, among them religion, sex (including sexual orientation and gender identity) and disability.

In most cases, those prohibitions do not extend to religious private schools which take in more than 90% of North Carolina’s voucher students. Many of those schools accept public tax dollars via the Opportunity Scholarship voucher program and deny admissions to LGBTQ students, students whose families practice the “wrong” religion, and students who have special needs such as learning disabilities. And many of the schools come right out and advertise their discriminatory practices in official school documents.

Here are a few examples:

Students with special needs:

Alamance Christian Academy in Graham, NC, assesses students based on their “emotional readiness,” as well as academic and behavioral histories as justification to refuse admission to students with “deficiencies.”

Southeastern Christian Academy in Shallotte, NC says “A student may be ineligible for enrollment based on achievement and/or individual learning styles. Because SCA is a private school, compliance with IEPs [Individualized Education Programs] issued by the public school system is not required.”

North Raleigh Christian Academy also discriminates against children with special needs. The school’s admissions policy states that NCRA only accepts students who score on grade level and will not admit anyone with an IQ of 90 or below. IEPs are not available at NCRA.

LGBTQ students:

Many of North Carolina’s private schools that receive millions in taxpayer funding via vouchers specifically deny admissions to LGBTQ students or vow to expel any student who is discovered to be LGBTQ after enrolling.

For example, Wesleyan Christian Academy does not accept students who are discovered to be “participating in, supporting, or condoning sexual immorality, homosexual orientation, homosexual activity, or bisexual activity; promoting such practices; or being unable to support the moral principles of the school.”

Wesleyan’s promise to exclude those students appears on the same handbook page where the school claims to seek students who are “reflective of the global community in which we live.”

Fayetteville Christian School similarly bars LGBTQ students, labeling them “deviate [sic] and perverted.”

High Point Christian Academy also accepts public funding through Opportunity Scholarship vouchers. This institution makes it clear that attendance is “a privilege and not a right,” and explains that when conduct within a student’s home diverges from “the biblical lifestyle the school teaches,” the school may refuse admission or discontinue enrollment.

Students with religious differences:

More than 90% of the students claiming public voucher dollars attend religious private schools, and the vast majority of those schools are Christian schools. While some are tolerant of religious diversity, many of them will not accept students unless they are Christian.

Freedom Christian Academy in Fayetteville only accepts students “whose home life is led by parents who have a vibrant relationship with Jesus Christ.” The student’s spiritual life must demonstrate “a relationship with Jesus Christ resulting in age-appropriate virtue and high moral character.”

Fayetteville Christian Academy, previously mentioned above for denying admissions to LGBTQ students, specifically states in its admissions requirements that it will “not admit families that belong to or express faith in non-Christian religions such as, but not limited to: Mormons (LDS Church), Jehovah’s Witnesses, Muslims (Islam), non-Messianic Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, etc.”

Research clearly shows that the most important factor in student learning outcomes is access to excellent teachers. North Carolina requires public school teachers to be licensed in order to demonstrate they have the necessary skills for the job.

Mount Zion Christian Academy in Durham does not require teachers to be licensed, but this voucher-receiving organization is proud of the fact that the school’s entire staff has demonstrated being filled with the Holy Spirit by speaking in tongues.

Public schools are proud to welcome, accept and support our students exactly as they are. It’s disappointing that North Carolina’s state legislature and “school choice” proponents are moving in the opposite direction by exponentially increasing public funding for schools that deny learning opportunities to specific students.

If you object to your public tax dollars funding institutions that discriminate in this way, please contact your state legislator and urge them to oppose expansion of the Opportunity Scholarship voucher program.

Categories Bigotry, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, North Carolina, Vouchers

Idaho: How to Destroy Public Schools and Grab the Money: Connect the Dots

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2023 //
16

Steve Berch is a member of the Idaho House of Representatives, one of only 11 Democrats in a body with 70 members. He is serving his third term. His analysis of the attack on public education in Idaho and other states is brilliantly cogent. He understands that privatization is all about the money. This article appeared in the nonprofit IdahoEdNews.org.

Berch describes the playbook of the privatization movement.

Berch writes:

Idaho will spend $2.3 billion on K-12 public education in 2024. There are powerful out-of-state forces who want to get their hands on that money. Some are driven by profit, others by political ideology, religious beliefs, or a combination of interests. They all share one common goal: shift your public schools dollars to the private sector. Here are some of the dots to connect in the “privatizing public education” playbook:

  1. Make public schools look worse than other school choices. The legislature does this by continually underfunding public education. Schools can’t meet parental expectations, accommodate growth, or hire/retain experienced teachers when salaries are not competitive and buildings are falling apart. Idaho has a backlog of over $1 billion in K-12 school building maintenance and we’re still at or near the bottom in per-student investment, even after having a $2.1 billion surplus and a recent budget increase. This makes other school choices look more attractive by comparison.
  2. Undermine confidence in public schools. Propaganda campaigns incite fear and anger against local schools. Parents are bombarded with false claims about porn in libraries, groomers in classrooms, and student indoctrination. Non-stop postings on social media perpetuate these inflammatory accusations. Self-proclaimed “think tanks” funded by third-parties produce official looking reports that create a false perception of legitimacy to these manufactured fears.
  1. Hide the facts. Legislative leaders tried to kill the Office of Performance Evaluations (OPE) – which provides factual, in-depth, unbiased research and analysis to the legislature. The public wouldn’t know about the billion dollar backlog in school building maintenance if OPE didn’t exist. The OPE report that revealed this new information angered political leaders trying to tell a different story. Without facts, false narratives go unchallenged.
  2. Legislative intimidation. New laws are making classrooms a hostile workplace. This includes bills that threaten to sue educators, imprison librarians, fine school districts, muzzle teachers, and empower the Attorney General to aggressively prosecute the targets of these punitive laws. No wonder teachers are leaving Idaho.
  1. Promote “school choice” and “education freedom.” This is clever rhetoric, but it is meaningless since Idahoans already have a myriad of education choices – none of which are going away. It’s not about having choice, but rather having you pay for someone else’s choice. A recent in-depth investigationrevealed a vast network of powerful forces funneling money into Idaho to promote and sell their alternative education choices to the public.
  2. Kill public education with vouchers (deceptively called Education Savings Accounts, or ESAs). An attempt was made earlier this year to convert most of the $2.3 billion public education budget into checks sent to parents to spend however they want – without accountability. This would starve Idaho public schools into oblivion.

The 2023 bill tried to hit a home run and failed. However, the lobbyists behind privatizing public education will be back, fronted by their legislative allies. Expect to see legislation next year that allows public tax dollars to pay for private and religious school tuition in limited amounts and isolated situations.

This is fool’s gold – there is no room for compromise. If the legislature allows just a small amount of public tax dollars to be spent on tuition for any private school, your tax dollars must be made available to all types of private schools and religious schools. Once one bill passes, the flood gates open up to flow your public education dollars to the bottom line profits of private sector businesses.

Your public education tax dollars belong in your public schools, not in their pockets.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Education Industry, Funding, Idaho, Lies, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Oklahoma: $39 Million in Federal Pandemic Funds Tilted Towards Private Schools, Not the Neediest

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2023 //
3

Two nonprofit news organizations in Oklahoma—The Frontier and Oklahoma Watch—teamed up to discover a misuse of federal funding by special interest groups. One such group was Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children. The state received $39 million to aid students during the pandemic.

Millions in federal relief money meant to help Oklahoma students during the pandemic was misspent at the hand of special interest groups who gave preferential treatment to private schoolers while hundreds of needy children missed out on financial aid, a state audit has found.

The Stay in School program provided tuition assistance of up to $6,500 for private school students whose families were financially affected by the pandemic.

An audit released Tuesday also confirmed flaws in how the state handled the Bridge the Gap Digital Wallet pandemic relief program. A joint investigation by The Frontier and Oklahoma Watch last year revealed how families spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in Bridge the Gap money on video game consoles, Christmas trees and grills.

Both programs were funded through the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund, a pot of flexible federal money intended to give governors the power to fund educational programs during the pandemic…

Before he was elected State Superintendent last year, Ryan Walters oversaw the implementation of the pandemic programs funded with federal relief money while he was executive director of the pro-school reform nonprofit Every Kid Counts Oklahoma and after Stitt appointed him Secretary of Education in September 2020. State auditors were unable to find any contract authorizing Every Kid Counts Oklahoma to oversee the programs.

E-mail records obtained by Oklahoma Watch and The Frontier show Walters issued a “blanket approval” for purchases of all vendor items available on the ClassWallet platform, after the company gave him a chance to restrict which items could be purchased….

State Auditor and Inspector Cindy Byrd’s audit found $1.8 million in questioned costs for the Bridge the Gap Program and $6.5 million for the Stay in School program. The report found programs were overseen by individuals and private organizations who were unqualified, didn’t have contracts with the state authorizing them to perform the work and were granted access to confidential student records.

The audit found that almost 20% of purchases through the Bridge the Gap program were spent on non-educational items, against grant guidelines.

According to Byrd’s report, administrators of the Stay in School program were involved in a “deliberate operation to give selected private schools and individuals preferential treatment by allowing early access for application submission prior to the date this program was offered to the general public.”

Jennifer Carter, a prominent school choice advocate and president of Libertas Consulting LLC was named as an administrator for the Stay in School program administrator without entering into a contract with the state, the audit found.

Carter is a senior advisor for former U.S. Education Secretary Betsy Devos’s education privatization organization Federation for Children, served as chief of staff and campaign manager for former State Superintendent Janet Barresi and has been involved in multiple school-choice efforts in Oklahoma. ClassWallet also listed Carter as a district administrator.

With Carter’s direction, five, unnamed private schools were given preferential treatment for the Stay in School program, the audit found.

Students from the preferred schools were awarded the maximum $6,500 per-student and received enrollment exceptions for children who had not previously attended, the audit found.

After funds ran dry, 657 students of low-income families who qualified for the Stay in School program did not get the financial assistance. More than $5.3 million went to families who said they did not have a pandemic-related financial hardship. The audit also found private schools received $1.8 million in excess of families’ tuition responsibilities.

In a statement to The Frontier, Carter said the American Federation for Children did not bill the state for its work on the program.

“As the nation’s leading voice for education freedom, AFC was happy to offer advice to the state around the implementation of the Governor’s Stay in School Fund GEER program,” Carter said. “The Stay in School Fund, which was aimed at minimizing students’ education disruption during COVID, served almost 1900 kids with tuition assistance. We gladly provided this service at no expense to taxpayers….”

The state auditor said:

“This was a tangled web of government agencies, non-profit organizations, and non-government individuals representing special interest groups managing millions of tax dollars with no contracts and no written agreements,” Byrd said. “Sadly, millions of tax dollars were misspent because certain individuals who were put in charge of managing these programs seemingly ignored federal grant guidelines.”

Wasn’t it charitable of the American Federation for Children to divert money away from impoverished children to private school students, at no cost to the state?

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Corruption, Education Industry, Fraud, Oklahoma

Bill Phillis: Ohio Republicans Transfer Powers of State Board of Education to Governor

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2023 //
2

William Phillis, a former deputy state commissioner of education in Ohio, has devoted his retirement to fighting against the privatization of the state’s public schools. He reports here on the GOP’s latest gambit:

HB33 strips the State Board of Education of its primary powers and duties, contrary to Article VI section 4 of the Ohio Constitution.

The transfer of the State Board of Education functions is unconstitutional. Additionally, the 135th General Assembly and Governor violated the single purpose clause (One-Subject) provision of the Ohio Constitution. Article II section 15(D) states, “No bill shall contain more than one subject, which shall be clearly stated in its title.” HB33 is a budget bill. The transfer of the primary duties of the State Board of Education to the Governor’s office is a policy matter unrelated to finance. This matter should immediately be challenged in Court.

If the “transfer” would be enacted as a separate bill (it was HB12 before being injected into HB33), it could be successfully challenged in Court. In 1953, the people of Ohio passed a constitutional amendment that transferred the Department of Education from the Governor’s office to the State Board of Education.

Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OhioEandA

VOUCHERS HURT OHIO

William L. Phillis | Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding | 614.228.6540 |ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net| http://ohiocoalition.org

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Elections, Ohio, Privatization

Bob Shepherd: Hear Ye! Voucher Schools Offer Great Opportunities!

By dianeravitch
July 14, 2023 //
62

Bob Shepherd is a polymath who has written curriculum, textbooks, and assessments. He recently retired as a teacher in Florida. We are fortunate to have him as a regular commenter on the blog.

He describes two promising opportunities for Florida, which is poised to transfer billions of dollars from public schools to unregulated, unaccountable private schools.

Vouchers create many business opportunities: Here are a couple that occur to me:

Business Plan 1 (We Put the Duh in Flor-uh-duh):

Come on down to our “Race to the Top of Mount Zion Enrollment Jubilee” in the old K-Mart parking lot this Saturday and sign yore kids up for Bob Shepherd’s Real Good Floruhduh School. You can use yore Florida State Scholarships to pay for it, and so its absolutely FREE!!!! No longer due you havta send yore children to them gobbermint schools run by Socialists whar they will be taut to be transgendered! We offer compleet curriculems, wrote by Bob’s girlfriend Darlene herself, including

World HIS-story (from Creation to the United States of Dimocrat Babylon to the Rapshure)
Political Science (We thank you, Lord, for Donald Trump; the Second Amendmint; and protecting our Borders from invading hoardes of rapists and murderers)
English (the offishul langwidge of the United States, and the langwidge the Bible was wrote in)
Science (the six days of creation; how to make yore own buckshot; and how Cain and Abel survived among the dinosaurs)
Economics (when rich people get tax brakes, that makes you richer)

And much, much more!!! Plus, you don’t havta worry yore hed about safety, cause all are teachers is locked and loaded!

Bob’s Real Good Florurduh Skool, located across from Bob’s Gun and Pawn right next to Wild Wuornos’s Adult Novelties.

It’s been real good runnin’ this here skool. Free innerprize! So much better then tryin to live on Darlene’s disability! Make America Grate Agin!

Business Plan 2 (Akashic Kakistonics, or Opening Heaven’s Gate to Every Child):

Tired of those failing public schools? Want to send your child to a true Akashic Academy where he/she/they can receive nourishment for the mind AND the soul?

Then enroll him/her/them in Enlightened Master Bob’s AYAHUASCA SCHOOL FOR LITTLE COSMIC VOYAGERS.

Here at Enlightened Master Bob’s, your child will learn how he or she can skip breakfast, lunch, and dinner and draw nourishment directly from Father Sun in our Solar Temple.

We offer complete holistic health training, using our proprietary textbooks on the Ethereal Body, including uncapping and aligning children’s Chakras so they can download DIRECTLY from the Mother Ship the Cosmic Light necessary for the coming Transformation from Earth-bound Homo sapiens to Interdimensional Beings.

In our history classes, students will learn all about Atlantis, Lemuria, Camelot and Glastonbury, the Black Rock Desert, and other Places of Power throughout the Ages.

Students will also learn how to protect themselves against the forces of the Evil Galactic Emperor Xenu and his band of sometimes invisible, shape-shifting reptilian aliens from Alpha Draconis.

But don’t delay! Soon, as our galaxy moves into proximity to the Pleiades, the vibrational tone of the entire planet will rise to such a pitch that we will either undergo Ascension or explode, and everything—the FATE OF THE PLANET– depends on how many young Lightworkers we can bring into Alignment and Cosmic Consciousness before then!

Of course, all this is absolutely FREE because you can use your State Scholarship Voucher to pay for it.

And best yet, all classes are taught by the Spiritual Wives of Enlightened Master Bob himself!!!!!

Categories Accountability, Curriculum, DeSantis, Education Industry, Extremism, Florida, For-Profit, Funding, Humor, Vouchers

Peter Greene: Oklahoma Superintendent Tries to Define “Woke,” But Can’t

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2023 //
86

Peter Greene discovered that Ryan Walters, the State Superintendent of Education in Oklahoma, attempted to define “Woke” on a far-right website. WOKE is one of those new terms of opprobrium, like “critical race theory,” that Republicans despise but can’t define. Peter eagerly read Walters’ effort to defund Woke, but came away disappointed. It seems that Woke is whatever you don’t like. You may have seen the stories recently about Walters insisting that the Tulsa race massacre of 2021 had nothing to do with skin color, although as the Daily Beast reported, “white mobs killed as many as 300 Black residents and burned some 1,600 homes and businesses in what was known as Black Wall Street.”

Peter Greene writes:

Oklahoma’s head education honcho decided to pop up in The Daily Caller (hyperpartisan and wide variation in reliability on the media bias chart) with his own take on the Big Question–what the heck does “woke” mean? (I’ll link here, because anyone who wants to should be able to check my work, but I don’t recommend clicking through).

Walters tries to lay out the premise and the problem:

Inherent to the nature of having a language is that the words within it have to mean something. If they do not, then they are just noises thrown into a conversation without any hope of leading it anywhere. And when the meaning is fuzzy, it becomes necessary to define the terms of discussion. To wit, the word “woke” has gained a lot of popularity among those of us who want to restore American education back to its foundations and reclaim it from the radical left.

I’m a retired English teacher and I generally avoid being That Guy, particularly since this blog contains roughly sixty gabillion examples of my typo issues, but if your whole premise is that you are all for precise language, maybe skip the “to wit” and remember that “restore back” is more clearly “restore.”

But he’s right. The term “woke” does often seem like mouth noises being thrown into conversations like tiny little bombs meant to scare audiences into running to the right. However, “restore American education back to its foundation” is doing a hell of empty noising as well. Which foundation is that? The foundation of Don’t Teach Black Folks How To Read? The foundation of Nobody Needs To Stay In School Past Eighth Grade? Anyone who wants to talk about a return to some Golden Age of US Education needs to get specific about A) when they think that was and B) what was so golden about it.

But since he doesn’t. Walters is also making mouth noises when he points the finger at “opponents of this movement.” If we don’t know what the movement is, we don’t know exactly what its opposition is, either. Just, you know, those wokes over there. But let’s press on:

Knowing that many such complaints are made in completely bad faith because they do not want us to succeed, it would still be beneficial to provide some clarity as to what it means and — in the process — illustrate both the current pitiful state of American education and what we as parents, educators, and citizens can do about it.

Personally, I find it beneficial to assume that people who disagree with me do so sincerely and in good faith until they convince me otherwise. And I believe that lots of folks out on the christianist nationalist right really do think they’re terribly oppressed and that they are surrounded by evil and/or stupid people Out To Get Them. It’s a stance that justifies a lot of crappy behavior (can probably make you think that it’s okay to commandeer government funds and sneakily redirect them to the Right People).

But I agree that it would be beneficial for someone in the Woke Panic crowd to explain what “woke” actually means. Will Walters be that person? Well….

In recent years, liberal elites from government officials to union bosses to big businesses have worked to co-opt concepts like justice and morality for their own agendas that are contrary to our founding principles and our way of life.

I don’t even know how one co-opts a concept like justice or morality, but maybe if he explains what agenda he’s talking about and how, exactly, they are contrary to founding principles or our way of life, whatever that is.

But he’s not going to do that. He’s going to follow that sentence with another that says the same thing with the same degree of vaguery, then point out that “naturally, this faction of individuals” is after schools to spread their “radical propaganda.” Still no definition of woke in sight. No–wait. This next start looks promising–

Put simply, “woke” education is the forced projection of inaccurately-held, anti-education values onto our students. Further, to go after wokeness in education means that we are going after the forced indoctrination of our students and our school systems as a whole.

Nope. That’s not helping, either. “Projection” is an odd choice–when I project an image onto a screen, the screen doesn’t change. There’s “projection” when I see in someone else what is really going on in me, which might have some application here (“I assume that everyone else also wants to indoctrinate students into one preferred way of seeing the world”) but that’s probably not what he has in mind. I have no idea how one “forces” projection. “Inaccurately-held” is also a puzzler. The values are accurate, but they’re being held the wrong way? What does this construction get us that a simple “inaccurate” would not? And does Walters really believe that schools are rife with people who are “anti-education,” because that makes me imagine teachers simply refusing to teach and giving nap time all day every day, except for pauses to explain to students that learning things is bad. I suspect “education” means something specific to him, and this piece (aimed at a hyperpartisan audience) does seem to assume a lot of “nudge nudge wink wink we real Americans know what this word really means” which would be fine if the whole premise was not that he was going to explain what certain words actually mean.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Fake, Fraud, Gender, History, Hoax, Hypocrisy, Oklahoma, Politics, Privatization, Propaganda, Racism

Ohio: Legislature Gives More Money to Students in Private Schools Than Those in Public Schools

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2023 //
16

Stephen Dyer, former Ohio legislator, closely follows school funding in the state. After studying the latest budget, he realized that the Legislature was sending more money to private school students than to public school students. The Ohio legislature loves charters, Cybercharters, and vouchers. Apparently, the Republicans who dominate the Legislators don’t care about public schools. Nor do they care about accountability.

Dyer begins:

Look, I’m really excited that the Ohio General Assembly followed through on its promise to continue implementing the Fair School Funding Plan — the state’s second attempt at meeting its constitutional mandate to provide a thorough and efficient system of public schools for its 1.7 million students.

I mean, in nearly 2/3 of Ohio school districts, the state is already meeting or exceeding its promised funding amounts from two years ago. And while the lion’s share of the remaining shortage is felt in the state’s most needy districts (something I expressed concern about earlier this year), the fact that the state is actually starting to fulfill promises made to Ohio’s 1.7 million public school students is encouraging. Again, though, only if they finish the job, of course..

But the massive increase to private school tuition subsidies that accompanied the public school increase is a colossal turd in the punchbowl. How colossal?

Try this on for size:

Because the state increased the private school tuition subsidy to $8,407 per high school student, the state will now provide $210 more per student to parents whose kids are already in private schools than they will to public school students in Ohio’s urban core of Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo or Youngstown schools, which educate 173,000 students.

In fact, that $8,407 per pupil amount is greater than the per pupil state aid for nearly 8 in 10 Ohio students. A remarkable 1.13 million Ohio students will get less state aid than the parents of a private school student will receive next year.

Oh, and did I mention that not a penny of these tuition subsidies will be audited by a public entity? So we have no idea if the money is being spent educating kids or buying sweet rides for private school administrators. (Because that’s never happened in this state).

And the disparity is despite Ohio’s historic public school funding increase that occurred in this budget — again, a great accomplishment.

But man. This is crazy….

It would be one thing if vouchers (taxpayer provided private school tuition subsidies) provided better options for students. But study after study has demonstrated pretty clearly that even in urban districts, generally the public schools do better than the private schools — in Ohio, it’s almost in 9 of 10 instances that the public outperforms the private. Never mind that vouchers have also delayed critical investment in the educations of the 1.7 million Ohio public school students or added significantly to racial segregation.

Please open the link to read the rest of this shocking story.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Funding, Ohio, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Florida: Vouchers for All, Rich and Poor, Cut Public School Funding

By dianeravitch
July 11, 2023 //
32

Remember back in the day when vouchers were sold as a way to “save poor kids from failing schools”? Those days are over. The new Republican pitch is “universal vouchers,” vouchers for all, regardless of family income, regardless of whether the students ever attended public schools.

Florida is one of several Republican-led states that have passed universal vouchers. With the new money free-for-all, public schools are hiring marketing directors and communications staff to persuade students to enroll in public schools.

Katherine Kokal of the Palm Beach Post describes how public schools in Palm Beach have responded to the introduction of universal vouchers.

For first time, the Palm Beach County School District will actually need to start convincing parents to send their kids to public school.

That’s because Florida’s expanded school voucher program, which went into effect July 1, opens the door for parents of all incomes to use taxpayer money for tuition at private schools. That money is taken away from the student’s public school district at a cost of about $8,000 per student. In March, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation that removed the previous income and enrollment limits on the program.

The program has left loads of uncertainty in the school district’s budget, but one thing remains clear to school leaders: Public schools need to better “market” themselves if they’re going to compete.

Superintendent Mike Burke announced an idea in the spring to market public schools to families weighing their options. The district launched a kindergarten registration campaign to get Palm Beach County’s youngest students in public school classrooms. Their thinking was that if students start in public school, they’re more likely to stay.

Among the first orders of business for the district’s new chief communications strategist will be expanding its marketing campaign to try to prove to parents considering vouchers that public schools are their best choice.

“I think we’re going to have to dedicate real resources to this beyond our website,” Burke said. “We’ve been competing with charter schools for 20 years. We’ve never competed with private schools.”

New voucher options arrive on Florida’s education scene at a time when public school districts are fighting pressure from fringe candidates, library book bans and new limitations on what teachers can talk about in the classroom.

Coupled with new obligations to pay millions for private school vouchers, some education experts say Florida is eroding its public education system altogether.

“It’s hard not to look at all of this and grieve,” said Joshua Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University. “Every school has a pitch. What’s different now, particularly in Florida, you’re going to see schools thinking very carefully about how to market themselves vis-à-vis the culture war stuff.”

Not all private schools in Palm Beach County are religious schools, and they’re also separate from charter schools, which are public schools run by private companies.

Palm Beach County is home to 161 private schools registered with the Florida Department of Education as of July 6. Of those schools, 44% are religiously affiliated.

And most accept vouchers.

While 109 private schools accept Family Empowerment Scholarships right now, Burke anticipates that number growing over the next several months.

“I think we’re going to see proliferation of small, ‘mom-and-pop’ private schools,” he said. “Private schools in a strip mall where people think they can turn a profit.”

Please open the link to finish reading the article.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Competition, DeSantis, Disruption, Education Industry, Florida, Funding, Hoax, Privatization, Religion, School Choice, Vouchers
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »