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

Cathy Frye Tells All About the Shadowy World of School Choice in Arkansas, Part 7

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2019 //
5

Cathy Frye worked for a Walton-funded front organization called the Arkansas Public School Resource Center, which really didn’t want to help public schools.

She has been spilling the beans in a series of posts. This is her latest. 

Her post contains links to her previous posts.

She begins:

The Arkansas Public School Resource Center touts itself as a “collaborative local partner” when describing how it excels in supporting rural traditional public schools and open-enrollment charter schools. 

APSRC, funded since 2008 by the Walton Family Foundation, describes the reason for its existence thusly:

The mission of the Arkansas Public School Resource Center is to support the improvement of public education by providing advocacy services on behalf of public schools with a special emphasis on charter schools and rural districts.

This is a blatant lie. 

Yes, APSRC will draft – and lobby for – legislation that will benefit the state’s open-enrollment charter schools. It also will sit idly by while Walton-backed legislation regarding private-school vouchers floats through the Legislature. I’ve watched APSRC do this twice, during the 2017 and 2019 legislative sessions. 

But this “nonprofit” organization does not represent – let alone advocate for- the 85 percent of the state’s rural traditional public schools that are paying $2,500 per year to be members of APSRC. 

Nor does APSRC “represent” Arkansas’ larger school districts that are spending thousands of dollars on “technical-assistance” contracts. 

So why do 85 percent of Arkansas’ traditional public school districts remain – or become – APSRC members? 

 

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Hoax, Walton Foundation

Valerie Jablow: Teacher Attrition in D.C. Reaches Crisis Level

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2019 //
9

Since 2007, when the flamboyant Disrupter Michelle Rhee took charge of the schools of D.C. with an unlimited grant of power—no checks, no balances, no constraints—the cheerleaders for Disruption (aka “Reform”) have made bold claims about the D.C. “miracle.” This despite a major cheating scandal that Rhee swept under the rug and despite a graduation rate scandal that followed a nonsensical, false  claim by a high school that 100% of its students graduated.

Now this.

Blogger Valerie Jablow reports that the D.C. public schools face a major crisis of teacher attrition. 

In the wake of years of testimony about horrific treatment of DC teachers, SBOE last year commissioned a study by DC schools expert Mary Levy, which showed terrible attrition of teachers at our publicly funded schools, dwarfing attrition rates nationally.

An update to that 2018 study was just made available by SBOE and will be discussed at the meeting this week.

The update shows that while DCPS teacher and principal attrition rates have dropped slightly recently, they remain very high, with 70% of teachers leaving entirely by the 5-year mark (p. 32). Retention rates for DC’s charter schools are similar to those at DCPS–with the caveat that not only are they self-reported, but they are also not as complete and likely contain errors.

Perhaps the most stunning data point is that more than half of DCPS teachers leaving after 6 years are highly rated (p. 24). This suggests that the exodus of teachers from DC’s publicly funded schools is not merely a matter of weeding out poor performers (as DCPS’s response after p. 70 of this report suggests). Rather, it gives data credence to the terrifying possibility that good teachers are being relentlessly harassed until they give up and leave.

Sadly, that conclusion is the only one that makes sense to me, given that most of my kids’ teachers in my 14 years as a DCPS parent have left their schools–with only a few retiring after many years of service. Most of my kids’ teachers were both competent and caring. Perhaps not coincidentally, they almost always also lacked basic supplies that they ended up buying with their own money; were pressured to teach to tests that would be the basis of their and their principals’ evaluations; and feared reprisal for saying any of that.

(I’m hardly alone in that observation–read some teacher testimony for the SBOE meeting here, including that of a special education teacher, who notes that overwork with caseloads; lack of supplies; and increased class sizes for kids with disabilities are recurring factors at her school that directly lead to teacher burnout.)

In other words, high teacher attrition in DC’s publicly funded schools isn’t a bug but a feature.

 

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Data, District of Columbia, Education Industry, Education Reform, Rhee, Michelle, Teacher Shortage

Charter Advocates Outraged by Warren K-12 Plan

By dianeravitch
October 22, 2019 //
44

Politico Morning Education reports that charter advocates are furious in response to Warren’s K-12 education plan , especially her intention to cut off federal funding for charters. They are especially frustrated because she is not accepting corporate donations for her campaign, and they can’t buy her support.

CHARTER ADVOCATES BLAST WARREN’S PLAN: While drawing praise from teachers unions, Warren’s hard-line approach to charter schools in a new K-12 plan is under fire from a Democratic group that says her stance is “out of touch” with voters and will hinder opportunities for black and brown students.

— The plan, which would cost some $800 billion over 10 years, would ban for-profit charter schools, end the main source of federal funding for all types of charter schools, and end federal funding for their expansion.

— “While we agree with the Senator that for-profit charters should be banned and that public charter schools should be held to high standards, limiting high-quality options that have been proven to increase equity within the public school system is the wrong plan for Democrats,” said Shavar Jeffries, Democrats for Education Reform’s national president, in a statement

In case anyone from Politico reads this, the Network for Public Education isnot funded by unions and is not a union front. DFER is funded by Wall Street and should be identified as such.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Democrats for Education Reform, DFER, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

Elizabeth Warren Explains Her K-12 Education Plan

By dianeravitch
October 22, 2019 //
23

Elizabeth Warren released her K-12 education plan on Monday. I was thrilled that Warren calls for elimination of the federal Charter School Program, which has become Betsy DeVos’s personal slush fund. This year, she dumped $440 million into states that never asked for it and don’t need it, while fattening the coffers of well-funded corporate chains like KIPP, IDEA, and Success Academy.

As the Network for Public Education reported after analyzing the federal CSP awards from 2006-2014 (before DeVos took office), the federal government failed to investigate applicants and awarded more than $1 billion to charter schools that either failed to open or closed soon after opening. The CSP has been a dismal failure and a waste of federal funds. Considering that charters are already funded by the Waltons, the Koch Foundation, the DeVos family, the Broad Foundation, Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, and dozens of other billionaires and corporations, it is not necessary for the federal government to add more to this vast stockpile of funding for charters.

Here is Warren’s plan. 

Please note that her plan links to NPE’s “Asleep At the Wheel” as the rationale for ending the federal Charter Schools Program.

  • End federal funding for the expansion of charter schools: The Federal Charter School Program (CSP), a series of federal grants established to promote new charter schools, has been an abject failure. A recent reportshowed that the federal government has wasted up to $1 billion on charter schools that never even opened, or opened and then closed because of mismanagement and other reasons. The Department of Education’s own watchdog has even criticized the Department’s oversight of the CSP. As President, I would eliminate this charter school program and end federal funding for the expansion of charter schools. I would also examine whether other federal programs or tax credits subsidize the creation of new charter schools and seek to limit the use of those programs for that purpose. 

I like the Warren plan a lot. Everyone who has followed the blog for any length of time knows that the goal of NPE is to insist that public money go to public schools and to insist that public schools must be well funded so they can provide equal opportunity for ALL students.

We have seen over time that charters are the gateway drug to vouchers, and Betsy DeVos has done us a favor by making that linkage clear.

The Democratic Party must reclaim its heritage as the party that supports equity and supports real public schools that are transparent and accountable to elected officials, not secretive private boards.

Here is the fund-raising letter I received about her plan.

Warren for President
Diane,

Growing up in Oklahoma, all I ever wanted was to be a public school teacher.

My life had a lot of twists and turns along the way, but after I graduated from a public university where tuition cost only $50 a semester, I got to live my dream as a special education teacher at a public school in New Jersey.

I believe in America’s public schools, and I believe that every kid in America should have the same access to a high-quality public education — no matter what zip code they live in, the color of their skin, or how much money their parents make.

And right now, we’re not living up to that promise.

Betsy DeVos has been a disaster as Secretary of Education, but the truth is that funding for public K-12 education has been both inadequate and inequitable for a long, long time. Right now, we’re failing to treat public school teachers, paraprofessionals, and school staff like the professionals that they are. We need to pay them well, listen to them, and give them the support that they need.

We can do so much better for our students, our educators, and our communities, so that’s why today I’m releasing my K-12 public education plan that will:

  1. Fund schools adequately and equitably so that all students have access to a great public education.
  2. Renew the fight against segregation and discrimination in our schools.
  3. Provide a warm, safe, and nurturing school climate for all our kids.
  4. Treat teachers and staff like the professionals they are.
  5. Stop the privatization and corruption of our public education system.

And it would all be paid for by the Ultra-Millionaire Tax, a two cent tax on fortunes above $50 million.

Our students, public school educators, and parents deserve a president that will fight for them — and that’s the kind of president I’ll be. Add your name here if you support my plan to provide a great public school education to every student.

Here’s how we’ll get it done.

→ First, we’re going to invest hundreds of billions of dollars into our public schools (paid for by the Ultra-Millionaire Tax).

That means we’ll be able to quadruple Title I funding — an additional $450 billion over the next 10 years — to help every child get a high-quality public education. And we’ll make that additional funding conditional on states improving their commitment to educational funding themselves.

We’ll finally make good on our promise to fully fund IDEA — committing an additional $20 billion a year to ensure that students with disabilities receive the educational services they are entitled to.

My plan would invest an additional $100 billion in “Excellence Grants”, which would give schools the chance to invest in programs and resources that they believe are most important to their students.

Finally, my plan would invest at least an additional $50 billion in infrastructure in schools across the country, targeted at those that need it most.

→ We’ll renew the fight against segregation and discrimination in our public schools.

Integrated communities help create a society built on mutual respect and understanding, and integrated schools — which are demanded by our Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection to every person in this country — improve educational outcomes for students of all races.

That’s why I’m committed to strengthening Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race in any program or activity that receives federal funding — and reviving robust enforcement of its terms.

My plan uses federal education funding to encourage states to further integrate their schools, and my administration will strictly enforce the right of students with disabilities to a free and appropriate public education and will protect the rights of LGBTQ+ students, English Language Learners, and immigrant students and their families.

→ We’ll ensure every student has the opportunity to learn in a traditional public school that’s welcoming and safe.

My plan will expand access to early childhood services and education, eliminate high-stakes testing, and cancel student breakfast and lunch debt to ensure the federal government plays its part in trying to bring a positive and nurturing climate to every school.

We’ll also create safer environments for our students by ending zero-tolerance discipline policies, establishing more School-Based Health Centers in communities in health professional shortage areas, providing better access to career and college readiness, and addressing chronic absenteeism without punishing parents or children.

→ My plan works with states to sustainably improve pay and support for all public school educators — and as president, I will fight for our educators and treat them like the professionals that they are.

That means making sure that classrooms are well-equipped with resources and support so that teachers aren’t paying for school supplies out of pocket. We’ll also ensure that anyone can become a teacher without drowning in student loan debt.

In a Warren Administration, public educators will have a seat at the table — and that starts with strengthening the ability of educators to organize and bargain. And we’re going to invest in students by investing in our educators — by providing continuing education and professional development opportunities to all school staff and building up a more diverse educator and school leadership pipeline.

→ To keep our traditional public school systems strong, we must resist efforts to divert public funds out of traditional public schools.

We have a responsibility to provide great neighborhood schools for every student. Under my plan, we’ll eliminate the charter school funding program and end federal funding to the expansion of charter schools.

We’ll ban for-profit charter schools, end privatization, corporatization, and profiteering in our nation’s schools and crack down on corruption and anti-competitive practices in the education industry.

Diane, it’s time to live up to the promise of a high-quality public education for every student. My plan makes the big, structural changes that will help give every student, teacher, and school administrator the resources they need to thrive.

Will you add your name to show your support for my K-12 education plan, Diane?

Thanks for being a part of this,

Elizabeth

ADD YOUR NAME
Elizabeth doesn’t accept contributions from PACs of any kind or federally registered lobbyists. This grassroots movement is powered by supporters like you. Chip in now to help build our movement.

DONATE NOW
fb tw ig yt fk fk
Paid for by Warren for President
All content © 2019 Warren for President, All Rights Reserved
PO Box 171375, Boston, MA 02117

 

 

Categories Education Reform

New Hampshire: Democrats Block GOP Effort to Gut Local Control

By dianeravitch
October 22, 2019 //
0

 

New Hampshire’s Republican Governor, Chris Sununu (his father John Sununu was Chief of staff to President George H.W. Bush), appointed a man who homeschooled his children to be State Commissioner of Education. Commissioner Frank Edelblut has dedicated his time in office to undermining public schools. His big idea is called “Learn Everywhere,” which would allow the State Board of education to allow graduation credits for anything they wished, whether it was for-profit, or commercial, or lessons with Miss Sally, or anything else. Local school boards now have that authority, and they rightly complained that Learn Anywhere infringed on their realm.

Edelblut wants to put public schools out of business by allowing anything and everything to count for credit.

He is the Betsy DeVos of New Hampshire.

But Democrats in the legislature threw a big obstacle in front of Edelblut’s plan.

Lawmakers on New Hampshire’s legislative rules committee voted Thursday to reject the proposed “Learn Everywhere” program from the state’s Department of Education, in the latest blow to a months-long effort by Commissioner Frank Edelblut. 

In a 6-4 vote led by Democrats on party lines, members of the Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules voted to issue a final objection to the proposed rule change. 

But the action doesn’t kill the program for good. Under state law, the Department of Education can proceed with the rules over the objections of lawmakers. Doing that, though, would be risky. The department would assume all liability in the case of legal action, according to lawyers for the state’s Office of Legislative Services on Thursday.

If the citizens of NewHampshire want to save their public schools and prevent massive fraud with their tax monies, they have to replace Governor Sununu when he runs again and insist that the new governor put an educator in charge of the State Education Department.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Education Industry, Education Reform, New Hampshire, Privatization, School Choice

North Carolina: Leaders of Charter Chain Disappear into Thin Air

By dianeravitch
October 22, 2019 //
5

 

A few years ago, Oregon businessman John Bryan gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to make sure that the state had a welcome mat for charter schools. He coincidentally opened 17 charter schools across the state, under the aegis of a management corporation called TeamCFA. He also pushed the legislature to create an “Opportunity School District,” modeled on Tennessee’s failed Achievement SchoolDistrict, which would gather the state’s lowest scoring districts and give them to a charter operator. By happenstance or design, Bryan’s TeamCFA received the contract to run the district. Districts fought hard to prevent the state from taking over their schools, and eventually only one school was sucked in. The first evaluation of the OSD showed that its one school did not improve, and the district had a revolving door of superintendents and principals.

TeamCFA runs 17 charters with 11,000 students in North Carolina and another four in Arizona.

When a reporter at the Raleigh News & Observer tried to find out who was in charge, no one answered the phones or returned his messages.

The reporter did reach a board member.

“I want to clear up one misconception,” C. Bradley Miller, a member of TeamCFA’s board of directors, said in an email Friday to The News & Observer. “TeamCFA Foundation is not closing. We remain committed to supporting schools and their students and helping them achieve academic excellence.”

Miller said staff members still work at TeamCFA, but he didn’t provide any details. No one answered the phone at TeamCFA’s headquarters on a recent weekday and a voice mail from The News & Observer wasn’t returned.

The staff directory, email and telephone contact information on TeamCFA’s website was gone Monday afternoon.

Staff members who left and were contacted by The N&O would not say why they left.

Amid the uncertainty, two new schools that opened in August — Bonnie Cone Classical Academy in Huntersville and Community Public Charter School in Stanley — no longer plan to have TeamCFA run their day-to-day operations.

They just picked up and left without so much as a “by your leave.” It’s an innovative way to supply high-quality seats and academic excellence.

Read more here: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article235919992.html#storylink=cpy

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, North Carolina, Privatization

Kentucky: Don’t Be Fooled! Charters and Vouchers Harm Children.

By dianeravitch
October 22, 2019 //
3

 

Rev. Sharon Felton, coordinator of Pastors for Kentucky Children, warns parents and other members of the public not to be fooled by the rhetoric. Charters, vouchers, and tax credits are not good for children, and they drain resources from the public schools that educate most children.

She writes:

Educating our children is the most important thing we do in the commonwealth. Educating all of our children no matter their family’s economic status, their address, the color of their skin, is so critical to our society and our future that our constitution requires it!

Section 183 of the Kentucky Constitution states, “The General Assembly shall, by appropriate legislation, provide for an efficient system of common schools throughout the State.”

People are pouring money and rhetoric into our state to convince us all that privatization, school choice, scholarship tax credits (vouchers), and charter schools are the answer to all our public school issues. What they are NOT telling us is that these programs often tend to harm students, public schools, families and our communities…

It is time we tell the privatizers no, once and for all. Our children are not commodities, available for the wealthy and corporations to profit…

Every time some high-dollar lobby group creates some new scheme to take money out of public schools, scholarship tax credits being the latest example, we take money away from the 648,369 children in public schools and make the job that much harder. We do not need to fund more than one educational system.

We do not need to give wealthy people tax breaks for donating to the private school of their choice. Instead, imagine the return if we invested everything we could into the great school system we already have going. Imagine how all our students would flourish if we provided for their teachers.

Imagine the future of our commonwealth with a fully funded public school system where teachers were paid what they deserve and had the resources to do their jobs and our children were afforded the highest quality education in the country. We will make this a reality when we choose to invest in our children and their public schools.

Join Pastors for Kentucky Children as we advocate for all of Kentucky’s children and our public schools.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Kentucky, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Teresa Hanafin on Our First Female Military Veteran

By dianeravitch
October 21, 2019 //
0

 

Teresa Hanafin, who writes “Fast Forward” for the Boston Globe, wrote today about a true American hero:

 

Mass. lawmakers on the joint veterans committee meet to consider a bill that would create a special memorial commission to study how best to honor Deborah Sampson, a native of Plympton who disguised herself as a man and fought in the Revolutionary War.

It’s a truly remarkable story. Sampson called herself Robert Shurtleff and escaped detection for a good 18 months, scouting the location of British troops and supplies, attacking Tories, and even digging trenches at the siege at Yorktown. She was shot in the left thigh once, but cut the pistol ball out herself so no one would examine her.

Alas, she was found out when she fell ill during an epidemic and passed out at a Philadelphia hospital. She received an honorable discharge, and Massachusetts eventually awarded her a full military pension — the only woman to get a pension from that war.

She got married, had kids, and lived as a fairly typical farmer’s wife in Sharon, but the farm didn’t do well, so she soon was giving paid lectures about her wartime experiences (before her pension came through). The towns of Plympton and Sharon have honored her; now it’s the state’s turn.

Thanks for reading. How on earth did Deborah Sampson pull that off? It helped that she was 5 feet, 9 inches — 3 inches taller than the typical male of the era. Send comments and suggestions to teresa.hanafin@globe.com, or follow me on Twitter @BostonTeresa. See you tomorrow.
Categories Courage, Education Reform

New York City Will Require MAP Tests for 76 Struggling Schools

By dianeravitch
October 21, 2019 //
89

 

Chalkbeat reports that New York City will require the MAP test for 76 low-performing schools three times a year, in addition to the mandated state tests and interim assessments. This is the beginning of the city’s new plan to add a new barrage of tests. A spokesman for the department said the new test is not a test, it’s actually instruction.

This reminds me of the historic Garfield High School boycott of 2013, when the entire school staff refused to give the MAP, a computer-based test, because it was not aligned with their curriculum and they considered it a waste of time. The teachers won.

This decision suggests that the New York City Department of Education has no new ideas, and the Mayor and Chancellor Carranza are adding new tests because they can’t think of anything else to do.

Categories Bill de Blasio, Education Reform, New York City, Standardized Testing

Class Size Matters: The Cost to New York City of Paying Rent for Charter School Facilities

By dianeravitch
October 21, 2019 //
5

 

Leonie Haimson and her colleagues Patrick Nevada and Emily Carrazana of Class Size Matters released a report on the cost that New York City pays for charter school facilities, even for richly endowed charters like Success Academy. The city is now spending more than $100 million a year to pay the rent for charters. This includes almost $15 million a year paying for rent where the charter or its management organization is the landlord!

In 2014, Governor Andrew Cuomo advanced legislation that required the City to pay the rent for charter schools in private buildings when the city was unable to provide suitable space in public school buildings. At the time, he declared himself the champion of charter schools, which helped him raise campaign funds on Wall Street. Charter students are 4% of the state’s students, and 10% in the City.

Here is the press release:

On Monday, October 21, Class Size Matters released a new report revealing how the NYC Department of Education has spent more than $377 million on charter school facility costs from FY 2014 to FY 2019.  This amount includes both matching funds for facility upgrades for public schools, co-located with charter schools that spent more than $5000 for this purpose, and on paying the rent for new and expanding charter schools in private space. Nearly $15 million of that total since FY 2015 was spent by DOE to help charter schools to help pay for their space, even though their buildings are owned by their Charter Management Organization, affiliated foundation or LLC.

In FY 2019, DOE spent about $25 million last year on matching funds to public schools co-located with charter schools.  Yet between FY 2014 and FY 2019, more than $22 million in charter school expenditures on facility upgrades were not matched in 175 public schools that shared their buildings, according to spreadsheets provided by DOE, in apparent contradiction to astate law passed in 2010. By FY 2019, only one third of co-located DOE schools received their full complement of matching funds.  

The two schools which experienced the largest shortfalls were both District 75 schools that serve students with serious disabilities: Mickey Mantle School (M811), located in two sites in Harlem, which lacked $1.5 million, and P.S 368 (K368), located  in two sites in Brooklyn, which lacked about $1.2 million. All four sites are co-located with different branches of the Success Academy Charter schools.

Mindy Rosier is the UFT chapter delegate from Mickey Mantle School, which enrolls students with multiple disabilities, including autism, emotional/behavioral difficulties and/or significant language and communication disorders.  As Mindy pointed out, “The $1.5 million in matching funds for facility upgrades would have been incredibly helpful to our school.  Our District 3 site needs new wiring, since the internet is very slow, and much of our curriculum is online. Our site in District 4 needs new bathrooms and water fountains, and nine classrooms out of ten badly need repainting.”

The DOE currently holds leases for 12 private buildings that house 15 charter schools, with a cost to the city of $17.1 million during FY 2019 alone. In addition, there are 88 charter schools that receive a per student “lease subsidy” to help pay for their own private space, which has increased by 72 percent since FY 2017. In 2019, DOE was projected to spend about $83.6 million in lease subsidies for charter schools, with an estimated $50 million of that total reimbursed by the state.

By analyzing property records, charter school financial reports, and sales records, the authors found that the payments made by DOE included $14.8 million for eight charter schools which are housed in buildings owned by related parties of these schools, that is, their own Charter Management Organization or an affiliated LLC or foundation.  

For example, DOE provided lease subsidies of $2.2 million in FY 2019 for two Success Academy charter schools even though the Success CMO owns their space in the Hudson Yards complex on the west side of Manhattan, reportedly the most expensive real estate development in US history. In another case, the city paid $461,965 in lease subsidies in FY 2019 towards the rental costs of Beginning with Children II charter school, despite the fact that the Beginning with Children Foundation bought this Brooklyn building for only ten dollars in 2017 from the Pfizer Corporation. More examples are provided in the report.

Carol Burris, Executive Director of the Network for Public Education said: “It is outrageous that the taxpayers of New York City and the state are required to pay $2.2 million a year to house two Success Academy charter schools located in a building in the Hudson Yards that the Success Academy Charter Management Organization owns. And Success is not alone. This report documents eight charter schools for which taxpayers are footing the facilities bill in buildings owned by the charters themselves or affiliated organizations. The Network for Public Education has studied all of the various charter laws and their loopholes.  I have never seen any other that requires the district to cover the costs of private facilities like this one does. One wonders whether this is about educating children or building a real estate empire at taxpayer expense.” 

“NYC has more than 500,000 students in overcrowded public-school buildings, as well as class sizes far higher on average than classes in the rest of the state.  Yet we are also the only district obligated to cover the cost of private space for charter schools, or offer them space in public school buildings,” said Leonie Haimson, one of the co-authors of the report. “The cost of providing space for charter schools in private buildings has risen sharply over the last five years.  If the current trend continues, the amount spent annually may soon exceed the cost of the payments that the city spends to finance the construction of new public schools.”  

Concluded Diane Ravitch, celebrated education historian, “The findings of this report, if validated, should shock the conscience of the Governor and Legislature.  They should amend the law as soon as possible so that the city is no longer forced to subsidizethe acquisition of private space by charter schools, even as our public schools continue to be badly underfunded and overcrowded. “

The powerpoint can be downloaded here.

The document can be downloaded here.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, New York City, Privatization
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »