Mayor Ras Baraka is defending the Newark schools chief after anonymous flyers and posters appeared across the city attacking the superintendent’s call to close four charter schools.
In an online message posted Monday evening, Baraka called the posters criticizing Superintendent Roger León “tasteless and sophomoric” and “based on ignorance.” He also defended León’s call for the state to shutter the four charter schools, echoing León’s argument that the charters divert funding from traditional schools and fail to adequately serve students with special needs.
Baraka’s message and the mysterious posters warning “Your school could be next!” are the latest flareup in an escalating dispute over the four charter schools: M.E.T.S., People’s Prep, Roseville Community, and University Heights. The schools are up for renewal, a routine process in which charter schools must apply for state approval to continue operating.
Linda Blackford, columnist for the Lexington Herald-Leader, describes the long-standing extremist goal of privatizing public schools and shows how Republican legislators are determined to introduce vouchers, which would harm the community public schools that enroll 90% of the state’s students.
Fortunately, voters in Kentucky threw out DeVos disciple Matt Bevin and replaced him with Andy Beshear, a friend of public schools. I hope the legislature has enough Democrats to prevent the Republicans from overriding a veto.
She writes:
At the macro level, this is an attack on public education, which is foundational to our democracy, and by the way, is actually guaranteed in the Kentucky Constitution. There has always been a basic compact that everyone’s taxes support public school for everyone because they educate the children that private schools reject. (Not to mention many private schools in the South were only started to avoid desegregation.) If people really think more students should go to private schools, then they should help private schools raise more funds for scholarships, not try to game their state taxes. In Kentucky, the bill is being pushed heavily by a widespread network of Catholic schools, which could afford many, many more scholarships if they didn’t have to pay out so much money in clergy sex abuse scandals.
Of course, public schools, like private ones, could do a better job with some of their students, but the answer is not to further starve schools for funding, or siphon off a stream of students to private schools with little accountability or oversight. Public education is a public good that should be supported by the public, not diverted and destroyed by our elected public servants. Although he was himself educated privately, FDR in 1936 noted that his administration’s support of public education throughout the Great Depression “has given to this country a population more literate, more cultured, in the best sense of the word, more aware of the complexities of modern civilized life than ever before in our history.”
Public education is still the linchpin to prosperity for most of Kentucky’s population, but many legislators seem determined to starve it. Sending a few hundred kids to private school won’t make this state great. Supporting our public schools, from kindergarten to college, can.
This is good news from California. A large group of school districts are suing JUUL Labs from the damage that their vaping products are causing to students.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Anaheim Union High School District Files Suit Against JUUL Labs, Inc. for Creating the E-Cigarette Epidemic that Disrupts District-Wide Education
Anaheim, California – January 28, 2020 – Today, the Anaheim Union School District filed a lawsuit against JUUL Labs, Inc. for the company’s role in cultivating and fostering an e-cigarette epidemic that disrupts the education and learning environment across the District. The suit was filed in the Orange County Superior Court on January 27, 2020 (Case No. 30-2020-01126712-CU-MT-CXC).
Five districts, all members of a consortium of California school districts filing against JUUL, filed on Monday, January 27th, including the following: Rocklin Unified School District, Alcanes Union High School District, Monterey Peninsula Unified School District, Anaheim Union High School District, and Poway Unified School District.
Ten more school districts in the consortium had filed prior to January 27th, including the following: Los Angeles Unified School District, San Diego Unified School District, Glendale Unified School District, Compton Unified School District, King City Union School District, Ceres Unified School District, Anaheim Elementary School District, Campbell Union High School District, Chico Unified School District, Davis Joint Unified School District, all against JUUL for the same negligence and nuisance claims. Together, the consortium of school districts serve more than 1 million California students.
The lawsuit seeks injunction and abatement to stop the e-cigarette epidemic, which has severely impacted the school districts by interfering with normal school operations. The District also seeks compensatory damages to provide relief from the district’s financial losses as a result of students being absent from school, coordinating outreach and education programs regarding the health risks of vaping, and enforcement actions – such as vape detectors, video surveillance, and staff to monitor the school’s property in an effort to combat the e-cigarette crisis.
“We are holding JUUL accountable for its role in affecting our youth, our schools, and families across the country due to irresponsible practices.” said District Superintendent Michael Matsuda, “JUUL has used deceptive practices to market to our students and create a nicotine addiction. They must be held responsible for their actions.”
Since entering the market in 2015, JUUL has dominated the e-cigarette industry and now controls over 70% of the market. Reports found that in 2018, 4.9 million middle and high school students used tobacco products, with 3.6 million of those students using e-cigarettes. From 2017 to 2018, youth e-cigarette users increased by 1.5 million. The lawsuit alleges that growth is largely based on JUUL’s market strategy, which is to target school-age children to ensure the continual growth of their consumer base.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse found that the 2018 spike in nicotine vaping was the largest for any substance recorded in 44 years. The lawsuits allege that JUUL’s aggressive, strategic marketing and product designs not only created an addiction crisis among youth consumers, but also a widespread burden on school districts.
Anaheim Union High School District is represented by John P. Fiske and Torri Sherlin of Baron & Budd, P.C. and Brian Panish and Rahul Ravipudi of Panish, Shea, & Boyle, LLP.
About the Anaheim Union High School District
The Anaheim Union High School District serves approximately 30,000 students in the communities of Anaheim, Cypress, Buena Park, La Palma, and Stanton. For more information about AUHSD visit our website, subscribe to our YouTube channel, and follow us on social media: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Nancy Flanagan, retired teacher of music for 31 years in the public schools of Michigan, is also a respected blogger. Her blog, Teacher in a Strange Land, has long been a source of wisdom and reality. She writes with the authority acquired from her years in the classroom.
In this post, she writes a wonderful review of my new book SLAYING GOLIATH. Better yet, she sets it in the perspective of a decade-long debate in which the billionaires, allied with the power of the federal government, portrayed themselves as the Davids, fighting those all-powerful teachers’ unions and their members, who were the real Goliaths (said Goliath).
Is this a picture of David, slingshot in hand? The Waltons ($150 billion), the Koch brothers ($120 billion—now divided in half since the death of David Koch), billionaires Eli Broad, Betsy DeVos, Philip Anschutz, Michael Bloomberg, John Arnold, Bill Gates, on and on. The 1% is armed not with an axe or a spear but with the power of federal law, imposed by state governments.
Not only is the 1% the Goliath of the story, they are the Status Quo. Don’t believe them when they claim they are fighting the Status Quo. Nonsense. They own it. No social movement was ever created by the rich and powerful. Genuine social movements rebel against the rich and powerful. They emanate from the millions who were left behind and excluded.
Ravitch’s books are like that—they’re full of juicy, provocative information and the author tells it like she sees it. When she changes her mind, she tells you that, as well. Like The Death and Life of the Great American School System (2010) and Reign of Error (2013), Goliath is time-sensitive, including the most recent teacher strikes, elections and civic rebellions, and what they accomplished. Ravitch takes the temperature of the current education zeitgeist and finds reason for hope.
What’s happening to public education in America?
Ravitch is perhaps our keenest observer, and when it comes to strong, substantiated opinions, she doesn’t hold back. Absorbing a Ravitch book gives the reader a summation of facts, players and events that put disparate events and opinion into a comprehensive framework, a detailed portrait of right now. Think of Death and Life as a warning, Reign of Error as blistering critique–and Goliath as we’re mad as hell and not going to take it anymore…
In short, it’s a really good book. It would be invaluable to anyone who wants a rundown on how education policy has morphed, over the past two and a half decades, from a locally controlled, state-influenced institution subject to incremental, community-driven change–to a thoroughly commercialized venture heavily influenced by would-be ‘innovators’ and a federal power-grab.
Ravitch has done us all a favor by tracing the dark roots and substantial financial support for chipping away at neighborhood schools and public education. As always, follow the money…
There are not many people—Disruptors, if you will—who have empowered school privatization and are now willing to admit that their ROI yields are unimpressive and propped up by shaky data. Especially since those who have been educating kids, doing the work all along—teachers and school leaders—could have told them what will and will not make a difference. Resistors have studied school improvement, up close and personal, for more than a century. It can be done, but it won’t involve destruction. Just more hard work.
Diane Ravitch has re-framed the argument and provided evidence that the great ship of public education may be turning around. That is a great gift. Thank you.
Thank you, Nancy Flanagan. It means a lot to me to know that the real experts, the educators who spent their careers as teachers, find my book valuable. It helps me ignore the slings and arrows of pundits and Goliath’s minions.
Politico Morning Education writes that Trump has chosen billionaire Betsy DeVos as a campaign surrogate, despite the fact that she is the most disliked member of his Cabinet. No doubt he hopes for DeVos campaign money but also wants to stick his thumb in the eye of teachers and supporters of public schools. DeVos campions charter schools and vouchers. She despises public schools.
DEVOS HITS THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL: Long a target for the left and protesters, DeVos is being deployed as a political asset for Trump. She will be among more than 80 surrogates campaigning for him at caucus locations across Iowa on Feb. 3, the campaign announced. Two days later, she’ll be with Vice President Mike Pence and senior White House aide Kellyanne Conway on Feb. 5 at a “Women for Trump” event in Camp Hill, Pa.
— Joining DeVos in the Hawkeye state will be several other agency heads, governors, and members of Congress and the state legislature, along with other campaign officials and advisers. Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. will also be on hand for what the campaign is calling an “unprecedented” surrogate operation.
— “This will be the strongest, best funded, and most organized presidential campaign in history,” said Brad Parscale, Trump 2020 campaign manager. “We are putting the Democrats on notice — good luck trying to keep up with this formidable reelection machine.”
— Iowa has a tax credit scholarship program, but it’s not considered a school choice leader. Its charter school law is considered weak, ranking in the bottom five of state laws for accountability, flexibility, funding equity and other metrics, according to a new report by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
I heard from Sarah Jonas, executive director of New York City’s Office of Community Schools, about the good work of community schools. Note that the results refer to engagement in school, not test scores. That’s good news!
I asked Jonas for a brief description of the community schools model. She wrote:
“The principal and his/her leadership team (i.e. SLT) formally partner with a community-based organization (aka Lead CBO) through a contract to do three things: 1) collaborate with families to develop a vision for and co-lead the community school; 2) provide services that meet the needs of the community and the whole child (i.e. social-emotional, physical, and cognitive); 3) hire a community school director to coordinate services to ensure that the right services support the right child at the right time.”
To learn more about them, open the link to the RAND report:
Dear Diane,
I am reaching out to share exciting news about our Community Schools work in NYC. As you may know, we hired the RAND Corporation early in the launch of NYC’s Community Schools initiative to study implementation and impact of the work.
Today, RAND will release the impact study entitled “Illustrating the Promise of Community Schools: An Assessment of the Impact of the NYC Community Schools Initiative” that will offer incredibly encouraging news. Mayor de Blasio will hold a press conference about the report at PS 67, a Community School near Fort Greene.
According to the report, NYC is implementing Community Schools on a scale that has not been seen before in the United States. RAND found that “the Community Schools strategy is having tangible and significant impact on a variety of student outcomes.” Specifically:
• Students in Community Schools are more likely to graduate on time. In 2017-18, graduation rates in community schools were 7.2 percentage points higher than comparison schools.
• Students miss fewer days of school. Chronic absenteeism was 7.3 percentage points lower in community elementary and middle schools, and 8.3 points lower in high schools.
• Disciplinary incidents declined sharply in elementary and middle schools compared to non-community schools. For every 100 students in elementary and middle community schools, community schools had 10 fewer disciplinary incidents per year.
It is encouraging to see significant impact across a range of domains including academic, attendance and behavior. Attached is a two-page summary with more details. The full report can be viewed at this link on RAND’s website.
The Washington Post ran a story about the report this morning, and we expect more media coverage after the press conference. Please help spread the good news to your networks on social media – #CommunitySchools!!
My new book SLAYING GOLIATH was launched in Park Slope, Brooklyn, on January 21. It was a delightful event, with Carol Burris and I discussing the book, talking about the national picture, and explaining the role of the Network for Public Education in pushing back against the Billionaire Combine. It was a lively and engaged crowd, including Lisa Rudley of New York State Allies for Public Education, one of the heroes of my book.
On Friday, Mary and I flew to Fort Lauderdale, where one of my nephews was getting married. It was a good time to catch up with family whom I don’t see often and to eat vast quantities of food (blowing away one of my New Year’s resolutions).
After the wedding festivities concluded, we moved to the apartment of New York friends who spend every winter in Fort Lauderdale.
Monday night was an event at one of America’s best independent bookstores: Books and Books in Coral Gables. And what a bookstore it is! I’m glad I got there early, with time to browse the shelves of this beautiful store, which has a vast supply of unusual books of literature and history. I could have spent hours there.
I met the owner, Mitchel Kaplan, who graduated from Miami public schools, spent three years as a high schoolEnglish teacher, then opened Books and Books. We did a podcast, and he was wonderfully enthusiastic about the book and had read it carefully (I have been interviewed in the past by people who had read nothing but the flap copy). After our conversation, which I will post here in a few days, we talked about our families and discovered that our grandparents came from the same place in Poland, called LOMZA (NOT Lombardi). My paternal grandparents emigrated in the 19th Century. His came to the U.S. at the end of World War 1. All the Jews of LOMZA were killed by the Nazis during the Second World War.
After the podcast, I hurried to a gathering of the leadership of United Teachers of Dade County at a nearby restaurant. Their president, Karla Hernandez Mats, is a very impressive, dynamic leader. She is also beautiful and enthusiastic. I couldn’t help but notice that she had a copy of the galleys of my book, filled with post-its. She read it!
We all went to the bookstore, which had a packed house, about 250 people, many of them teachers. Karla and I had a public discussion. I love this format. She raised the questions most important to Dade County, and I responded, riffing off into whatever else occurred to me.
The audience asked questions. Towards the end, a woman rose to speak and said ominously that all the schools in America were teaching Satanism, and they had to be stopped. She would have gone on and on, but I was able to pause her and told her I had visited many schools but had never seen any that taught Satanism.
A few more questions, and I started signing books. The line was long, and near the end, I realized I had to take a bathroom break, and I excused myself. I rushed to the WC, where I proceeded to drop my cell phone in the toilet (clean water) but it miraculously survived the ordeal. (A few years ago, my cell melted down after getting one drip of water on it at the bottom of my handbag…so, progress).
The evening over, I hugged my new lontzman, Mitchel Kaplan, and went with my friends back to Fort Lauderdale, an hour’s drive. This morning, off to DC. I will speak at Politics and Prose tomorrow night.
State regulators mouth complaints about the low quality of online charters yet they are renewed again and again. As Harris points out, even school choice advocates (except for Betsy DeVos) believe that the online charters should be regulated, yet they continue to operate unimpeded.
Harris writes:
SAN DIEGO — By the time authorities brought charges against the owners of A3 Education earlier this year, the online charter school company had bilked California taxpayers out of $50 million, according to indictments handed up in May.
The state would have lost another $200 million if authorities had not detected the scheme to inflate enrollment in the virtual charter school using names gleaned from youth sports league rosters, said San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan. League owners are alleged to have received kickbacks for providing names, according to the indictments.
A3 Education, a nonprofit management company that enrolled tens of thousands of California students at its peak, had sought out small school districts to authorize its online schools, knowing the districts would provide little oversight, authorities said.
The California case is the latest in a string of allegations of fraud and educational malpractice against virtual charter schools. These have included, among others, multimillion dollar scams in Ohio, Oklahoma and Indiana, and academic or financial problems that shuttered online charter schools in Georgia, Nevada and South Carolina.
California last year banned for-profit charter schools and this year adopted a two-year moratorium on new virtual charter schools. Neither law, however, would have affected A3 Education or its schools.
The Arizona Republic visited seven states to investigate the successes and challenges surrounding charter schools — the publicly funded but privately operated schools that many believed would revolutionize American public education through competition and innovation…
In Arizona, which has the most charter school students out of the states, no online charter school meets the state Charter Board’s academic standards. And Arizona’s largest virtual charter school, Primavera Online, earned the board’s lowest academic ranking and posted declining graduation rates for the last decade. That hasn’t stopped Primavera founder and CEO Damian Creamer from paying himself a combined $10.1 million in 2017 and 2018.
Primavera, which has a total enrollment of 22,000, reported a $10 million profit this year, while spending $6.9 million on teacher salaries.
“These guys are definitely in it for the profit,” said Macke Raymond, director of the nonpartisan Center for Research on Education Outcomes, or CREDO, at Stanford University.
Negative headlines have, however, prompted prominent charter school leaders to call on regulators to clamp down on virtual charters, and for the industry to cut ties with the schools.
Todd Ziebarth, a senior vice president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, said poor academic performance at virtual charter schools gives ammunition to teachers unions and others who oppose school choice, hurting high-quality charter schools and the broader school-choice movement.
“They make up a small percentage of charter schools, but a huge percentage of negative publicity,” said Tom Torkelson, chief executive of Texas-based IDEA Public Schools, one of the nation’s largest charter school operators. “They add no value. I would never send my kids to one.”
Torkelson argues that it’s time for online charter schools to go out of business.
But few states have enacted reforms, experts note, because when such proposals arise, virtual charter operators — flush with cash — have flooded key lawmakers with campaign contributions.
This proves that when a big charter corporation buys legislators, they stay bought.
Despite poor academic performance, virtual charter schools likely are here to stay because parents want that choice, said Raymond, the CREDO director.
However, CREDO notes in a study, low-performing online charter schools are not keeping their end of the educational “grand bargain” struck about 25 years ago, during the early charter movement.
That deal gave charter operators the freedom to teach kids in innovative ways with minimal red tape. By being allowed to run a school like a business, operators promised they would allow regulators to shut down poor performing schools.
To fix the problems, Stanford researchers concluded that charter school authorizers “must step up their responsibilities and demand online charter providers improve outcomes for students.” And, states should examine the progress of existing online programs before approving any expansions.
Raymond said she still believes in a “cost-efficient and effective education through online” schools but the system “doesn’t seem to deliver on that.”
University of Colorado researchers agreed that states should slow or halt the growth of virtual and blended schools until their performance has improved, and student-to-teacher ratios are lowered.
But Miron, the Western Michigan professor, said changes are unlikely.
Even when prosecutors, like the San Diego County district attorney, crack down on one virtual school another will quickly pop up because the business is so lucrative, he said.
“Even if a charter board fires them, it doesn’t affect them. They are not losing a building,” Miron said. “They don’t get punished for risky behavior. It’s a very different model for brick-and-mortar schools.”
Grassroots Arkansas is calling on friends of public education to wear black on January 28 to mark the death of democratic control—of, by, and for all the children of Little Rock, which has been under state control for five years.
***Call to Action***
• Wear black wherever you are and whatever you’re doing on January 28 – and tell people you meet why you’re wearing black today: “It’s the 5th anniversary of the State’s takeover of the Little Rock School District. It’s been 1,827 days since Little Rock had a democratically elected school board.” Tie a black ribbon around a tree, car, or mailbox.
• Post pics of yourself and others wearing black with the hashtag: #oneLRSD and #AsaFreeLRSD and voice your support online and in person on the 28th for a no-strings attached, democratically elected school board in Little Rock – now!
• Email Asa Hutchinson asa.hutchinson@governor.arkansas.gov with this subject line: “Asa Free LRSD”. In the body of the email simply sign your name and indicate any and all connections you have to the LRSD, e.g.: Jane Doe, LRSD student OR John Doe, LRSD parent OR Jane Doe, Little Rock business owner and taxpayer, etc.
It’s School Board Recognition month – and Little Rock still doesn’t have one. We believe that a school board election is possible in May 2020 as opposed to November 2020 when the State “says” it intends to allow an election. We believe for any elected school board to be legitimate it must come with no-strings attached, no limitations on the school board’s governing powers by the State
Bill Phillis is a public education activist in Ohio. He retired as Deputy State Superintendent of Education in Ohio several years ago.
He writes:
December 1, Columbus Dispatch Capitol Insider: Remember ECOT?
As the article indicates, most people have forgotten the ECOT debacle. The ECOT Man, William Lager, siphoned one billion dollars from school district budgets for a business plan that was designed to collect funds for tens of thousands of students that were not being served and tens of thousands of students that were underserved. Lager’s campaign funds-driven relationship with hundreds of state and federal officials over a couple decades allowed him to steal public money in public view. When citizens began asking questions about the thievery, some public officials scrambled to give the appearance of holding Lager accountable.
School districts will never receive back the millions and millions Lager illegally took from them.
Remember ECOT?
Most Ohioans have probably forgotten that the state is still trying to pry money from leaders of the now-defunct ECOT, the online charter school that shut down almost three years ago.
Even though the state started pursuing the money in 2018, a trial might not happen until 2021 under a recent timetable developed by lawyers for the state and those associated with the former Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow.
The attorney general is seeking to recover millions from ECOT founder William Lager; his companies, Altair Management and IQ Innovations; and several former ECOT officials. The lawsuit says Lager had a fiduciary duty to ECOT that was violated by the contracts signed to funnel money to his companies.
The delay is needed because Lager and his companies dumped 50,000 pages of new documents on the state in mid-October, on top of 50,000 already provided, a joint court filing from both sides said.
“The state needs time to review this latest, massive document production,” the filing in Franklin County Common Pleas Court said.
The modified schedule calls for a status conference Sept. 15, 2020, with a trial to be scheduled afterward.
Bill Phillis, longtime head of the Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding, remarked, “Although Lager amassed a lot of wealth on the backs of schoolchildren, it is doubtful that much, if any, will be recovered.”
