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The Price of Test Scores at Success Academy

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2019 //
31

 

Katy Crawford-Garrett is an associate professor at the University of New Mexico.

 

Success Academies, a network of 47 charter schools in New York City that serves a majority of Black and Brown youth from poor communities, has long been considered a star of the school reform movement, garnering accolades from politicians, philanthropists, and the media. Founded by Eva Moskowitz in 2006, Success Academies can claim some of the highest standardized test scores in the state of New York (often outperforming wealthy suburban districts), a metric which suggests that Success has done the impossible – figured out howto erase the achievement gaps that have confounded reformers, school leaders, researchers, and policymakers for decades.

 

At the end of a 7-episode podcast on Success Academiesdeveloped by Gimlet Media and featured as part of the StartUpseries, the host, Lisa Chow, weighs the pros and cons of Success’s controversial approach to educating poor Black and Brown youth by stating, “Maybe these emotional and social costs that families are paying, maybe those are the costs of catapulting across the vast achievement gap.” The “costs” that Chow is referring to — as articulated by parents, students, and teachers in vivid terms throughout the program — include the loss of humanity, dignity, and mental health, casualties, it seems, to achieving top scores on standardized tests. As a teacher educator and former elementary school teacher, I wondered if this was really where twenty years of aggressive educational reforms had brought us- to a place in which parents from historically-marginalized communities have to choose between their child’s scholastic success and their overall well-being.

 

The podcast offers a disturbing window into the approaches that Success uses in order to glean its unprecedented results including a disproportionate focus on test prep (sometimes up to 6 hours a day), harsh disciplinary practices (including record-high rates of suspension), and the revolving door of young,inexperienced teachers willing to work punishing hours and enforce strict policies, even as they have little to no formal preparation as educators.

 

We do hear some inspirational stories of students like Moctarwho earns a full ride to MIT and powerful accounts of children who thrive, at least initially, within the climate of academic rigor. However, like so many narratives of American education, the story of Success rests on the tired binary between innovative charter schools and status quo public schools, between lazy union employees and hard-working young idealists, and the familiar trope of the White savior and the Black and Brown children who need to be tightly controlled as they learn to dress and act more White and middle class.

 

Eva Moskowitz, Success Academies’ controversial founder, and the anti-hero of the podcast, counters these critiques vociferously throughout the program insisting that her schools not only teach children to read but to love reading and that beyond the robotic and stifling test prep, there exists a rigorous curriculum focused on critical thinking. It is often difficult to believe Moskowitz, earnest as she sounds, in the face of the mounting evidence that Chow and her fellow producers provide. A former teacher shares in heartbreaking terms how she found herself viewing students solely as numbers and colors- indicators of their performance on various assessments – rather than as individuals with ideas, thoughts and questions. A young Black student at the first Success Academy High School struggles with the ways in which her cultural identity is denied by the organization after non-religious head scarves are banned at the school. In the face of this critique, Moskowitz contends in a bewildered tone that all students at Success are the same,ignoring the complexity of her students’ racialized experiencesin and out of school and refusing to consider how the racist policies her schools enact actually undermine her espoused goal of ensuring student success. Throughout the podcast, I marveled at the notion that the kids are taught to master the assessmentsand adhere to the policies but never to question either.

 

In the Ethnic Studies movement, which has similar aims to Success but contrastive instructional approaches, posing critical questions is central to the curriculum. For over forty years, Ethnic Studies advocates have worked diligently and doggedly to foster rich educational experiences for Black and Brown youth in an effort to connect academic achievement to students’ cultural identities and to avoid the harsh disciplinary tactics and arcane policies that predominate at “No Excuses” charter schools. In Tucson, for example, a Mexican-American Studies program was introduced in 1998 as part of an effort to address endemic underachievement among Mexican-American youth. In the intervening years, literature and history courses were offeredwith an explicit focus on Mexican-American identity. By every measurable metric, the program was a success as participation in the program led to an increase in graduation rates, college attendance, and academic performance while simultaneously validating students’ cultural histories and sense of identity. Despite these laudable results, the program never had near the financial investment of Success Academies (Moskowitz spent $5 million alone on an advertising campaign when her school buildings were under threat by New York City Mayor BillDiBlasio), and instead of being scaled up, Mexican-American Studies was deemed illegal by the state of Arizona and shut down in 2011. The decision was eventually overturned after a costly and lengthy court battle; yet rebuilding the program will take years and, in the interim, countless Arizona youth were denied the opportunity to take Ethnic Studies courses. All of this exists in sharp contrast to the ways in which Success Academy has grown exponentially over the past decade, starting with one school in Harlem in 2006 and now counting 47 schools across New York City.

 

In the meantime, Ethnic Studies advocates have workedtirelessly, often without financial resources, investments from hedge fund managers, or the high-profile political connections enjoyed by Moskowitz to create curricula that honors students’cultural backgrounds, teaches critical consciousness, and fosters academic achievement without forcing students to make painful choices to abandon their heritage and humanity to adhere to White middle class norms.

 

I typically begin and end my teacher education courses with aquestion: What is education for and why does it matter? As much as we want to believe that education enhances social mobility, we know that it actually reproduces inequality- a phenomenon that Eva Moskowitz laudably seeks to address. My hope is that my students, who will all become teachers in one of the poorest states in our union, understand that asking and re-asking this question is foundational to our work as educators. If our answer focuses on educational access at all costs, then we end up with models like Success where kids learn to obey, sit with folded hands, and forsake their identities. But if our answer involves cultivating students capable of participating critically and humanely in our democracy, then we will conceptualize schooling differently and imagine new possibilities. As Moskowitz passionately argues, poor and marginalized youth deserve access to opportunity. They deserve challenge and rigor. They deserve an education that prepares them for college. But they also deserve an education that acknowledges their humanity – a process that makes all of us more fully human.

 

Sources:

https://gimletmedia.com/shows/startup/v4he75

 

https://scholars.org/brief/how-ethnic-studies-can-reduce-racial-achievement-gaps

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Discipline, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy

Jersey Jazzman: How “Creaming” Works in the Charter Schools of Newark

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2019 //
10

 

Jersey Jazzman seems to be in an endless battle with New Jersey’s largest newspaper, The Star-Ledger, or at least with the writer of its editorials. He went to the trouble of getting a doctorate in statistics so he could persuade that editorialist to understand how the charters produce high test scores. It is called creaming, picking the best and excluding the rest. 

This article explains how in works.

Creaming has become a central issue in the whole debate about the effectiveness of charters. A school “creams” when it enrolls students who are more likely to get higher scores on tests due to their personal characteristics and/or their backgrounds. The fact that Newark’s charter schools enroll, as a group, fewer students with special education needs — particularly high-cost needs — and many fewer students who are English language learners is an indication that creaming may be in play.

If you understand how creaming works (as in skimming the cream from the milk bottle when it rises to the top—a phenomenon unknown to people below a certain age), then the charter claims of superiority are unimpressive.

If you don’t understand, and you refuse to try, then you will find the Newark Test Scores to be “incredible,” as the Star-Ledger did. Parse that word: Incredible. Not credible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, New Jersey, Newark, Privatization

Jan Resseger: Will Raj Chetty Revive the American Dream?

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2019 //
37

Jan Resseger writes here about Raj Chetty’s return to Harvard to start a new project, reviving the American dream. l

In the past, we have known Raj as the prime author of a widely doubted study that concluded that one effective teacher (who raised test scores) would have a significant impact on lifetime earnings, pregnancy rates, and other important life outcomes. In the years since that study was published, the efforts to apply its lessons have universally failed, because–as social scientists have long known–the influence of teachers on student test scores is small as compared to the influence of the family, its income, its level of education, its devotion to education.

Jan’s post begins:

Raj Chetty, the superstar, big-data economist, has returned to Harvard from Stanford to establish his own Opportunity Insights research and policy institute, a project seeded with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative. Chetty’s research has created an Opportunity Atlas, which maps neighborhoods of opportunity and other neighborhoods where children are unable to move up the economic ladder.

After reviewing some of his ideas, Jan asks why Gates and CZI don’t advocate for a higher minimum wage, which doesn’t need a lot of new research to establish the premise that the best way to reduce poverty is to increase family incomes.

This is a good opportunity to recommend two very valuable books about the paradox of super-rich people saving the world:

Anand Girihiradhas, Winners Take All

Michael Edwards: Small Change: Why Business Won’t Save the World

Edwards makes this salient point: Why ask capitalists (or philanthrocapitalists, as he calls them) to fix the problems created by capitalism?

Categories Education Reform, Poverty

Jan Resseger: Eight Essential Facts About Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2019 //
11

 

The Charter Industry has led a sterling marketing campaign to persuade the public that they are public schools, that they are far better than “traditional” public schools, and that they are hotbeds of innovation.

None of this is true. They are privately managed schools. They receive public money but they are not public schools. Other than those that select their students, they do not get higher test scores than real public schools, and many are far worse. The only “innovation” that charters can claim is “no excuses” discipline, which looks like schools of a century ago.

Here are Jan’s facts you should know:

If you value the role of public schools—locally governed, publicly owned and operated—whose mission is to serve the needs and protect the rights of every child, you can be more supportive if you know the facts about charter schools. The public schools across the United States enroll 50 million students, 90 percent.  Charter schools suck money out of state budgets and public school districts while they enroll only 6 percent of American students. We all need to be actively refuting the myths and calling politicians on their errors when they betray their ignorance about the problems posed by the privatization of public education.

Here are eight facts to keep in mind:

  1. While their promoters try to brand them as “public charter schools,” charter schools are a form of school privatization. Charter schools are private contractors whose expenses are paid with tax dollars. Their boards operate privately—very often without transparency.
  2. For-profit charter schools are permitted in only two states—Arizona and Wisconsin. In the 43 other states whose laws permit charter schools, the schools must be nonprofits.
  3. Nonprofit charter schools are increasingly operated—and often highly controlled—by for-profit Charter Management Organizations (CMOs).  Sometimes, in something called a sweeps contract, a nonprofit turns over 90 percent or more of its operating dollars to the for-profit management company it has hired to run the school—meaning that the for-profit essentially runs the school.  But that school is technically a nonprofit. Eighty percent of Michigan’s charter schools are operated by for-profit CMOs.
  4. Charter schools are established in state law in 45 states and the District of Columbia. (West Virginia, the 45th state, just passed charter school enabling legislation in June, 2019.)  There are no federal laws that set up or regulate charter schools.
  5. Across the states, charter school fraud and corruption has run rampant due to weak regulation by state legislatures.
  6. Charter schools and their supporters and lobbyists have used their power to promote charter schools across the state legislatures. Groups like the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), ExcelinEd (Jeb Bush’s group), and the American Federation for Children (Betsy DeVos’s group) have lobbied for charter school expansion, and deregulation. Many state legislatures have passed “model” bills which were written and distributed by ALEC’s Education Committee to members of state legislatures who are also members of ALEC.
  7. No state has passed additional taxes to fund charter schools.  When states create charter schools, children who leave public schools to enroll in charters carry away state dollars and essential funding from the public school districts where the children were previously enrolled (see here and here). Public school districts are unable to compensate fully for the loss the public dollars that used to pay for public school services but have now been redirected to a privatized sector.
  8. Since it was begun in 1994, the federal Charter Schools Program has served as a sort of venture capital fund with grants to states to fuel the startup and expansion of the charter school sector. More than $1 billion has been wasted on charter schools which never opened or eventually shut down.  Proponents of the program, including Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have claimed this waste of tax dollars is acceptable because the money fueled educational innovation and entrepreneurship—even if there was a high rate of failure.

 

 

Categories Education Reform

John Merrow: The Public Purpose of Public Schools

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2019 //
64

 

John Merrow here examines the public purpose of public schools, which has been corrupted by forty years of treating standardized tests as the measure of school success.

He writes:

What exactly is the public purpose of school?  Why do communities invest in the education of all their young, instead of simply leaving the task of education to families?  We know that parents send children to school for a host of reasons, but the larger purpose–the communal goal–is worth considering.

Let me assert my hypothesis: the public education system has been highjacked by people obsessed with measurement,  so much so that children are reduced to their test scores.  For about 40 years most school reform efforts have been directed at symptoms, such as low graduation rates, low test scores, or “the achievement gap.” While these s0-called reforms sound great and may even produce temporary improvements, they inevitably fail because they are not addressing the root cause of our educational problems: an approach to schooling that is mired in the past and cannot fulfill the needs of the twenty-first century…

It’s not clear to me that Secretary of  Education Betsy DeVos believes that schools have a public purpose; her actions suggest that she believes a child’s education is the family’s responsibility–full stop, end of story.

Despite that, it’s my hope that, even in these sharply polarized times, we can agree that the purpose of schools is to help grow American citizens. Consider the four key words: help, grow, American, and citizens.

“Help”: This acknowledges that schools are junior partners in this. They exist to help—not replace—families.

“Grow”: Schooling is a process, sometimes two steps forward, one back. It’s akin to a family business, not a publicly traded stock company that lives and dies by quarterly reports.

“American”: E Pluribus Unum. We are Americans….an observation that bears emphasizing today, as we see Donald Trump playing racial politics with a vengeance.

“Citizens”: Here we need to put flesh on that term and figure out what we want our children to be as adults. Good parents and neighbors? Thoughtful voters? Reliable workers? And what else?

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, Testing

Tennessee: How Dark Money, DeVos, and Governor Lee Conspired to Pass a Voucher Bill—and Questions about Crime and Punishment

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2019 //
13

 

Andy Spears, publisher of the Tennessee Education Report, explains how voucher forces finally passed a bill in Tennessee.

The FBI is investigating how one vote flipped at the last minute.

But no matter the outcome of these investigations, backers of school privatization can claim public policy victory. It took a new governor, an unscrupulous house speaker, and untold dark money dollars, but after six attempts, Tennessee now has a school voucher plan—one that could shift more than $300 million away from public schools in the state.

The lesson from Tennessee is clear: Advocates for public education face privatization forces with vast resources and patience. The fight is going to be a long one.

Funny thing about these FBI investigations. Years ago, the FBI swooped into Gulen offices in Ohio, carted away many boxes, and nothing more was heard from them.

And then there’s Ben Chavis of the Oakland (CA) American Indian Model Schools, the darling of conservatives, the guy who replaced all the American Indian students with Asians and got the state’s highest scores. He was arrested after a state audit found that he had diverted nearly $4 million to his and his wife’s bank account, much of it federal money. He recently got off with one year of probation, no punishment for his theft, because he had done such good work in education. Vielka MacFarlane, head of the Celerity charter chain in California, admitted embezzling $3.2 million and was sentenced to 30 months in jail. She dealt with state authorities, not federal ones. Maybe she was sentenced, and Chavis got off with only probation because his schools had higher test scores?

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Privatization, Tennessee, Vouchers

Laura Chapman: Who Are the K-12 Education Experts at the Center for American Progress?

By dianeravitch
July 21, 2019 //
30

The Center for American Progress is considered by the media to be the voice of the Democratic establishment, or at least the Obama-Clinton center of the party. Referred to as CAP, it is resolutely pro-charter school, pro-testing, and anti-voucher (if it were not anti-voucher, its education agenda would be identical to the DeVos agenda).

So who are the experts who speak for the Democratic mainstream?

Our reader Laura Chapman is a dogged and diligent researcher. She studied the CAP website and posted the following review of the members of the CAP staff who write about K-12 education. It is interesting to see overlaps with Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Educational Excellence (which is stridently pro-voucher), the unaccredited Broad Residency (which advocates for closing public schools and replacing them with charters) and other decided not-progressive connections.

She writes here:

In April 2019, CAP had seven “experts” for K-12 education, several more for preschool and postsecondary education. I have looked at the bios of the K-12 experts and read some of their recent articles at the CAP website. Some artiles have appeared in Forbes, US News and World Report, The Hill, Hechinger Report, and The 74 (Walton funded blog). Who are these CAP experts? What do they say?

Neil Campbell, Director of Innovation for K-12 Education Policy. Former Director, Next Generation program for Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education with policy oversight for personalized learning, course access, funding, and student data privacy. Obama’s USDE Chief of staff, Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development; former Director of Strategic Initiatives for tech-based learning at Education Elements.com; work at The Boston Consulting Group. Education: Bachelor economics, political science, Case Western Reserve University; MBA, Vanderbilt University; The Broad Residency in Education. Teaching Experience: Not found.

Sample of writing for CAP: Excerpt from “Teacher Strikes, Charter Schools and Unions, February 26, 2019. “It’s unfortunate that questions about charter schools are diverting attention from the core message of these teacher protests: the need to invest in our schools, teachers and students. Instead of focusing on division, it would be powerful for teachers, unions and charter supporters to advocate together for greater investments in public education across the board. Every student deserves a building, supports and supplies needed to succeed, and every teacher — in traditional or charter schools — deserves to be treated and paid like a professional.”

Excerpt from “Policy Ideas to Improve Private School Voucher Programs,” November 19, 2018. “The Center for American Progress believes that public money should fund public schools, whether they are neighborhood schools, magnet or specialty programs in traditional school districts, or public charter schools that are open to all students and accountable to the public.”

Excerpt from “The Progressive Case for Charter Schools, With a Correction,” October 24, 2017.“Despite recent evidence suggesting that many public charter schools are improving outcomes for students—especially for low-income students of color—broad support for charter schools may be waning. According to one recent poll (Education Next, 2017) support for charter schools among self-described Democrats has fallen over the past year. This decrease in progressive support may be due to a skewed representation of charter schools in the media as well as a conflation of charter schools with ineffective private school vouchers—such as those Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and the Trump administration champion. However, to simply devalue all charter schools is unreasonable. The highest-quality charters exemplify progressive values and practices, most notably through their foundational principle of providing low-income students of color with equal educational opportunity and access they may not otherwise have.” (Links are to Uncommon Schools, KIPP, and Achievement First).

Khalilah M. Harris, Managing Director for K-12 Education Policy. Former host and producer of Real News Network’s Baltimore Bureau; Founder, 2007, Baltimore City Freedom Academy, a charter school closed in 2013; Co-founder Baltimore Coalition of Black Leaders in Education. Active in EduColor movement; Former Deputy Director, Obama’s White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans; Manager, Obama’s Diversity and Inclusion in Government Council. Education: Morgan State University; J.D. University of Maryland School of Law; Ed.D. University of Pennsylvania, 2018 Dissertation: “Chasing Equity: A Study on the Influence of Black Leaders on Federal Education Policy-making.” No CAP publications. Teaching: No K-12 Found.

Laura Jiménez, Director of Standards and Accountability. Former Director, College and Career Readiness and Success at the American Institutes for Research (AIR); former Director, American Youth Policy Center. Manager, National Youth Employment Coalition (a three-year pilot funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates and Nellie Mae Foundations); UCLA Minority Training Program in Cancer Control Research. Obama’s USDE, former special assistant on Every Student Succeeds Act “flexibility,” college and career readiness, special populations (American Indian/Alaska Native and English language learners). Education: BA English, UCLA; Master’s Social Welfare, University of California; Berkeley. Teaching (?): Peace Corps, Community Education volunteer.

Sample of writing for CAP: “Furthering the College and Career Readiness of the District of Columbia’s Students” for the Council of the District of Columbia on Education Reform.” May 2018. Her written testimony argues for all high school students to take ”four years of English; three years of math, up to Algebra II; three years of social studies, including U.S. and world history; three years of lab science, including biology, chemistry, and physics; and two years of the same foreign language” with an option in every high school of at least three courses in the same career pathway (e.g., hospitality, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). She also endorsed these policies: Monitoring chronic absenteeism at every grade, investing in low cost interventions for absences (e.g., postcards to parents), monitoring at risk students in order to target wraparound supports. Frequent reference citations to Gates-funded Data Quality Campaign and The Education Trust.

Lisette Partelow, Senior Director of K-12 Strategic Initiatives. Prior positions: Senior Policy Analyst CAP, Director of Teacher Policy, CAP; Legislative Associate, Alliance for Excellent Education; Senior Legislative Assistant US House of Representatives; Research Assistant American Institutes for Research (AIR). Education: BA Psychology, Public Policy, Connecticut College; Masters in Public Affairs, Princeton University: Masters in Education, George Mason University. Teaching: Teach for America, first grade, two years, Washington, D.C.

Sample of writing for CAP: In August 2018, Partelow and research assistant Sarah Shapiro wrote about “Curriculum Reform in the Nation’s Largest School Districts.” The authors used the Gates-funded EdReports criteria for judging whether fourth-and eighth-grade math and ELA instructional materials were aligned with the Common Core. They also cite the Louisiana Department of Education’s system of rating instructional materials as exemplary for offering “a snapshot of the current status of the adoption of curriculum reform and instructional materials in the districts.” In fact, the rating criteria for Louisiana are nearly identical to EdReports.

Scott Sargrad, Vice President, K-12 Education Strategic Initiatives. Prior positions: VP for K-12 Policy CAP; Managing Director, Education Policy CAP; Director for Standards and Accountability, CAP. Obama’s USDE Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and Strategic Initiatives: Senior Policy Advisor, Presidential Management Fellow. Intern, Vietnam Assistance for the Handicapped Hanoi, Vietnam. Education: BA Mathematics, Philosophy, Haverford College; Ed.M. Education and Management, Harvard Graduate School of Education.Teaching: Math and Cross-Country Track Coach, Queen Anne School (private), Upper Marlboro MD; Special education instructional assistant Harriton High School, Rosemont, PA.

Sample of writing for CAP: August 9 2018. “Are High School Diplomas Really a Ticket to College and Work? An Audit of State High School Graduation Requirements”(co-authored with Laura Jimenez) argues for more rigorous standards and courses for high school graduation suitable for “college AND career.” The term “audit” refers to three levels of quality ratings assigned to high school curricula in each state, based on perfect alignment with the specific courses that public colleges in each state seek for admission. No state received the highest rating. The report has other ratings for career and technical education (CTE) and a well-rounded education (e.g., life skills courses, financial literacy, online learning, business and communications, civic engagement). The authors say: “One promising approach to address the alignment and quality concerns is competency-based graduation requirements.” This report recycles ideas from the Education Trust (HS transcript data up to 2013), old data on course availability from the Civil Rights Data Project (2014), among other sources. In Appendix A, there are no active links to 137 of the 238 sources of data. https://c0arw235.caspio.com/dp/b7f930000e16e10a822c47b3baa2

Cynthia G. Brown, Senior Fellow, former Vice President for Education Policy at CAP; former Director “Renewing Our Schools, Securing Our Future National Task Force on Public Education,” a joint initiative (2004) of CAP and the Institute for America’s Future. Thirty-five years of work in education, many as an independent consultant. Former Director of the Resource Center on Educational Equity, Council of Chief State School Officers. First Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights in USDE (1980 appointment, President Carter). Principal deputy, Department of Health, Education and Welfare’s Office for Civil Rights. Other work for Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Children’s Defense Fund. Current: Board of Directors of the American Youth Policy Forum; Perry Street Preparatory Public Charter School, District of Columbia. Education: BA, Oberlin College: MPA Syracuse University. Teaching: None found. No CAP publications listed since 2013.

Catherine Brown. In February 2019, CAP replaced Catherine Brown as Vice President for K-12 Education Policy. Brown was “transitioned to a Senior Fellow role at the Center.” As of April 26, 2019 Catherine Brown did not appear on CAP’s website as a Senior Fellow or on the roster for CAP Action. Her LinkedIn bio affirms her recent move to Senior Fellow at CAP.

Brown joined CAP in 2014 after serving as vice president of policy, Teach for America. She directed Teach for America’s Early Childhood Initiative, and successfully lobbied USDE for a $50 million Investing in Innovation grant for TFA. Brown is a longtime insider on Capitol Hill. She was the senior education policy advisor for George Miller chair of the House Committee on Education and Labor offering recommendations on standards, assessments, and charter schools among other issues. Brown was the “domestic policy advisor” for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and legislative assistant for Senator Clinton on major initiatives (e.g., preschool, college affordability, job training). Brown also served as an organizer for Democrats in Montana and as a research assistant, Mathematica Policy Research. Education: Smith College, Master in public policy, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Teaching experience: None Found.

Writing for CAP. Catherine Brown was a co-author of the“The Progressive Case for Charter Schools,” October, 2017, which was posted on this blog recently. 

Brown’s July 2018 article in Forbes “Proposing A $10,000 Raise For Teachers” highlights a CAP proposal for a federal tax credit for teachers in high poverty schools. Brown developed that idea, reported in detail at. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-k-12/reports/2018/07/13/453102/give-teachers-10000-raise/

Brown was recently credited as “consulting” with presidential candidate Kamala Harris on a similar proposal. Harris has proposed matching teacher salaries with federal funds. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/03/reformers-and-unions-love-harriss-teacher-pay-plan.html#comments

Ulrich Boser, Senior Fellow, Founding director, CAP’s Science of Learning initiative. Founder, The Learning Agency.com. Book: “Learn Better: Mastering the Skills for Success in Life, Business, and School, or, How to Become an Expert in Just About Anything” (2017); also “The Leap: The Science of Trust and Why It Matters,” (2014). Book publicity in Wired, Slate, Vox, Fast Company, The Atlantic, USA Today. Former advisor, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. Articles in U.S. News and World Report, Education Week, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Smithsonian, The Washington Post. Education: BA, Dartmouth College, with honors. Teaching: None Found.

Sample of writing for CAP: “How to Match Students With Schools They Choose,” November 13, 2018. (This reflects an uncritical acceptance of school choice and explains one app enrollment) [Editor’s note:. Boser write a strongly critical article about vouchers, but has never written critically about charters. CAP seems to have a party line that protects the legacy of Race to the Top.] 

“Homework and Higher Standards: How Homework Stacks Up to the Common Core,” February 13, 2019. Study based on 187 examples of homework submitted by parents and an opinion survey from 372 parents about that homework. Key findings: Homework is largely aligned to the Common Core standards but often focused on low-level skills that fail to challenge students (especially in primary grades). CAP recommendations for states, districts, and schools: Focus on homework that requires practice of rigorous grade-level content aligned with the Common Core, and/or provide access to Khan Academy’s online homework aligned to Common Core.

Current CAP Experts in K-12 Education strike me as short of teaching experience in classrooms. Recent articles show they are supporters of charter schools, treat the Gates-funded Common Core as if exemplary and look forward to instructional delivery by computers (mislabeled personalized learning). They are arrogant pushers of specific instructional materials and high school curricula, aided by the Gates-funded EdReports scheme. The Center for American Progress is no friend of public education.

CAP also has a news arm, Think Progress, a newletter supported by CAP’s Action Fund but represented as an “editorially independent project.” I wonder. The IRS 990 says: “The Action Fund makes communications to the general public commending or criticizing particular public policy positions taken by various candidates. … The newsletter is intended to “impact the national debate and transform progressive ideas into policy through rapid response communications, public education, grassroots organization and advocacy in partnership with American citizens, executive and legislative branch policymakers and progressive leaders throughout the country and the world.” The Newsletter has a new “Members-Only Commenting” feature available only “to our donors” with perks (e.g., shaping the content) for monthly rates at $5. or $15 or $35.

I looked a recent Think Progress Newsletters dealing with charter schools. I found seven. Of these, most are reports on federal budget and policies under Trump/Devos. The strangest had this headline: “Lawsuit claims that same-sex marriage leads to charter schools, and it may be right.” The author, Ian Millhiser, is a lawyer with expertise on Supreme Court cases. I could not find my way through the legal leaps connecting charter schools with same-sex marriage. The legal objective seemed to be that of establishing a federal law supporting educational choice, that to be justified by past Supreme Court rulings bearing on the 14th Amendment. The case was dismissed 02/20/2019. The law firm advancing this dubious cause also filed the Vergara v. California suit that dealt with a child’s right to instruction by “effective teachers.” That was overturned on appeal. https://thinkprogress.org/tag/charter-schools/

GENERATION PROGRESS is the youth activist and youth journalism arm of CAP. https://genprogress.org/our-issues/

WHO FUNDS CAP? Using the CAP website, I constructed a spreadsheet listing CAP donors for the last five years according to several tiers on money. I will report on some of the key donors later on.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Democrats, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Vouchers

Laura Chapman on the Center for American Progress Plan to Return to the Bush-Obama Agenda

By dianeravitch
July 21, 2019 //
13

Laura Chapman has been doing research on the Center for American Progress, which the media views as the voice of the Democratic Party. This may be the most depressing thing you read today. It calls for a return to the principles of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. Both failed. CAP wants to resuscitate the worst features of both. Maybe CAP can persuade Arne Duncan to return as Secretary of Education. Then the disaster would be complete.

 

And here we go with the new progressive agenda for schools.

Almost every week Neera Tanden, President of the Center for American Progress (CAP) appears on television to opine about the presidential elections. Tanden is a former aide to Hillary Clinton. CAP is supposed to function as a think tank for Progressives, especially Democrats. On July 2, 2019, CAP published: A Quality Education for Every Child: A New Agenda for Education Policy.” The press release asserted: “The Next President’s Education Agenda Must Center Racial Disparities in Educational Opportunity.”

I have been studying this report. It is highly critical of K-12 education. It is also calculated to mislead casual readers. The authors claim the report is “a bold and comprehensive approach to K-12 education.” I think not. Many of CAP’s favored policies endorse two decades of federal demands for accountability. Think Arne Duncan and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (B&MGF).

CAP is on record as favoring teacher unions and higher pay for teachers, especially for those who work in low-income communities. However, CAP is also all-in for charter schools, known to be antiunion. This contradiction is one among others this report. The writers also bury important details in the endnotes. For example, CAP wants students to meet “challenging standards.” The endnote cites the Common Core. In addition, CAP’s website has over 50 articles pushing the Common Core, the latest in 2019. This affection can be explained by the $14 million CAP has received from the B&MGF, main financier of the Common Core, and specific grants: In 2013, $550,000 “for implementation of the Common Core,” and in 2016, a cool $2 million for “enactment of the College and Career/Common Core agenda, and to reduce opposition to it and associated high quality tests.”

CAP’s policy recommendations for the next President are bad news for public schools. The Introduction claims that a bipartisan consensus exists on key elements of education reform—standards-based accountability; teacher evaluations that include test scores of students; and school choice. The authors then say that these three reforms are not the problem. The real problem is that improvements have not been made “at the pace needed to give every student a fair shot at success in college and career.” CAP elaborates on all of these claims in five policy priorities for a new administration.

Applying An Explicit Race Equity Lens To Policy Development. “This means specifically looking at potential impacts on communities that do not identify as white or that have large concentrations of families with low incomes, without conflating the two.” This section is an argument on behalf of increasing opportunities for historically disadvantaged communities, schools, and students. CAP’s discussion of race ends in naming groups who are underserved: Students who are non-white, Black, Latinx, Native American, and some Asian American and Pacific Islander children, students from families with low incomes, students with disabilities, students who identify as LGBTQ, and students who are English language learners.

“A new administration must begin with a comprehensive strategy for addressing disparities in educational opportunity” (ideally) ”coupled with a comprehensive economic development strategy beyond the educational system.” CAP calls for $200 billion to modernize school buildings; a grant program to promote “culturally responsive pedagogy”; state audits of schools and districts for “disparate educational opportunity,” and USDE guidance to state legislatures on equitable funding.

Equitable funding seems to mean “filling the annual $23 billion gap in funding between predominantly white and predominantly nonwhite school districts.” I found the source of this estimate. It is EdBuild. EdBuild promotes “a weighted student funding formula” so that money goes to the school a student attends, aiding school choice, including vouchers. ALEC, the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange has also pushed this system of funding since 2010.

It turns out that CAP as a financial supporter of EdBuild. CAP and EdBuild also receive money from the same foundations: The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation; Carnegie Corporation of New York; Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Helmsley Charitable Trust; Walton Family Foundation; Laura and John Arnold Foundation, and W. K. Kellogg Foundation among others. CAP traffics in ideas and money devoted to undermining public education.

Preparing All Students For College And The Future Workforce. CAP dwells on the economic return on investment from college and high-value work credentials. The report calls for states with “college-and career-ready academic content standards” (aka the Common Core) to make sure a K-12 ladder prepares students for careers “in the new economy.” Districts should make sure that families with children in kindergarten know requirements “for the future of work.”

CAP also wants “a new federal-state-industry partnership” empowered to identify middle and high school models for accelerated college credit and a meaningful workforce credential. This partnership is also supposed to ensure that career and technical education (CTE) programs “reflect upcoming, well-paid, in-demand jobs” in regions where the programs are offered.

CAP’s thinking about CTE is not bold. It is not progressive. It assumes that labor markets are predictable and that schools should be responsible for job training desired by potential employers. CAP’s policy ideas are vintage 1990s workforce training proposals from the National Center for Education and the Economy. They ignore the civic mission of schools and what life may offer and require of students beyond getting a job. http://www.ncee.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Americas-Choice-High-Skills-or-Low-Wages.pdf
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3. Modernizing And Elevating The Teaching Profession. Here is the major claim: “If states and school districts raised teacher pay to match that of other professions, provided training to help teachers meet the needs of the changing student population, and increased the selectivity of the teaching profession, the national narrative about and respect for the teaching profession would shift. A comprehensive policy agenda to achieve this goal should be multifaceted and must ensure that teachers are given the necessary training and resources to meet a higher bar.”

CAP’s discussion of teacher strikes, low pay, and other discontents has little bearing on a “comprehensive agenda to raise the prestige of teaching and improve teachers’ working conditions.” For teacher education programs CAP says: Be more selective in accepting candidates for teaching and explicitly seek diversity among candidates, provide high-quality clinical training and more rigorous coursework of use in modern classrooms.
For states and districts, CAP says: Align requirements for licensure with candidates’ observable readiness to teach; invest in supports for new teachers, such as high-quality induction and mentorship programs; provide dedicated time and support for professional development that improves student outcomes; and identify career pathways so excellent teachers can expand their effectiveness.

There is nothing daring or innovative about these recommendations. The puffed-up “elevating” language comes from a Obama/Duncan 2012 RESPECT program conjured by McKinsey & Company https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/obama-administration-seeks-elevate-teaching-profession-duncan-launch-respect-proSome of the same points appear in CAP’s 2015 report “Smart, Skilled, and Striving: Transforming and Elevating the Teaching Profession.” Here is a scathing review of this warmed over Obama scheme from the National Education Policy Center. https://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-tprep

4, Dramatically Increasing Investments And Improving The Equity Of Existing Investments In Public Schools. CAP writers note that about eight percent of public schools funds come from federal sources. Title I funding is dedicated to schools were many students are from families with low incomes. CAP wants Title I funding increased and full funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Act.

CAP’s big new policy idea is this: “The federal government should appoint a commission to determine a specific set of critical education resources that are typically present in privileged communities but missing from historically disadvantaged schools and districts. These resources could include guidance counselors, school nurses, mental health professionals, art and music classes, or extracurricular enrichment opportunities.” (I found no endnotes or details about who would appoint the commission, with what authority, or how their deliberations might be acted upon.)

CAP proposes federal “public education opportunity grants” as a way to address inequities. This is not a new idea. Such grants are available under Title I, Part A Improving Basic Programs Operated by Local Educational Agencies. The grants are for schools with a high proportion of students from low-income families. In 2018, these grants were funded at $15,759,802,000. (CAP does not seem to have ideas on state and local funding other than money follows the student.)

Bringing A Balanced Approach To Charter School Policy. To its credit, CAP does not support for-profit on-line charter schools. It also urges the next administration to “include strong authorizing and accountability policies for charter schools as well as efforts to proactively address the shortfalls of the sector. These efforts should include solutions for pain points, such as issues related to backfilling enrollment during the school year, providing service to students with disabilities, and maintaining transparency in financial operations—to name a few.” (Pain points? Shortfalls? Not a single endnote refers to well-documented and rampant corruption in charter schools. Not one).

CAP is on record as favoring charter schools. CAP’s 2017 “The Progressive Case for Charter Schools,” offers praise for Teach for America and Relay Graduate School of Education. CAP’s 2018 “Charters and the Common Good: Spillover Effects of Charter Schools in New York City” includes this astonishing claim: ”There is suggestive evidence that spillover effects (from co-location) are larger if the charter school appears to be of high quality, (defined) as either having high average scores on annual 4th-grade math and reading exams or being operated by an established, respected charter management organization such as KIPP, Success Academy, or Uncommon Schools.” (Respected? Franchise cookie-cutter schools are great?)

According to CAP, charter schools represent a solution to racial and economic inequities in education. “In too many places across the country, there are not enough good seats in schools, especially for Black, Latinx, and Native American students, as well as students from families with low incomes. A strong charter sector is a critical component to expanding the number of good public school seats, and high-quality charter schools are a valuable strategy to address that problem.” (CAP refuses to acknowledge that charter schools are not legally equivalent to public schools. They are now and historically have been a means to further segregation. “Seats” is shorthand for a calculation used to market charter schools in any community where schools are ranked A-F or in league tables. The enrollments in all schools not rated A or B, or an equivalent system are counted as all of the “seats” that could be replaced by the imagined “high quality seats” in charter schools).

CAP wants the next administration to “apply a race equity lens to public school choice policies generally and charter schools specifically, with a focus on equitably expanding access to opportunities for underserved students. This means that decisions on where to locate schools and programs and how to make enrollment decisions—for example, boundaries, admissions requirements, and lottery rules—should be analyzed with a race equity lens.“ (CAP assumes that school choice is an uncontested and established policy. Notice the absence of any reference to elected school boards. Decisions are “just made” as if from some invisible decider).

“This approach should include a balanced assessment of potential charter growth and the impact on traditional districts. This assessment should always focus on how to increase the number of good seats for students but may imply different specific recommendations in different places and circumstances.”

CAP’s eagerness to endorse school choice and charter school growth is not just in accord with Trump/Betsy DeVos’ policies. It also responds to the wishes of key funders of CAP. For example, the Walton Family Foundation has sent CAP $1,228,705 in three grants for K-12 education, with a 2017 ”special projects” grant of $453,705 for work on “Supporting High-Quality Charter Schools” and “Implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act.”

CAP’s report is designed to promote charter school growth and double down on every misguided policy of the last two decades. I have left a ton of references and rants on the cutting floor. By the way, all five of the authors of this Report had staff positions on the Hill and four worked in Obama’s Department of Education. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-k-12/reports/2019/07/02/471511/quality-education-every-child/

Categories Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Obama, Race to the Top

Mercedes Schneider Dives into the Tax Returns of Oklahoma’s EPIC Charter Fraud

By dianeravitch
July 21, 2019 //
17

 

We learned recently that Oklahoma officials have charged the EPIC online charter with fraud, alleging that its leaders siphoned off $10 million for themselves while inflating enrollments of ghost students.

Schneider does her specialty investigation of EPIC’s tax returns and discovered that the corporation was created in 2009 for a variety of purposes, but not education. It eventually amended its filing to add education. In other words, the founders were entrepreneurs in search of a mark.

In 2010, it had revenue of $60,000.

After it went into the charter business, EPIC hit pay dirt. In 2016, it’s revenues exceeded $29 million.

Is this a great country or what?

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Oklahoma, Privatization, Virtual Charter Schools

Utah: Charter-Friendly Legislator Makes Millions from Helping Charters

By dianeravitch
July 21, 2019 //
18

 

Salt Lake City station KUTV noticed that the charter industry has a good friend in the Legislature. He has made millions from charter schools.

Journalists Chris Jones and Nadia Phlaum report:

State Sen. Lincoln Fillmore (Dist. 10) is one of the foremost experts on charter schools in the state legislature. That makes sense given that he runs Charter Solutions, a company that from 2015 to 2018 has collected $5.7 million in fees from charter schools.

That is taxpayer money given to those charter schools. As many as 23 different charter schools have hired Fillmore’s company to help them administer their curriculum and take care of back office activities like payroll and human resources.

Fillmore says although he does field questions from lawmakers regarding charter schools, he never sponsors legislation that affects them. 

Fillmore says he has no conflict of interest. Just business as usual.

The report includes a long list of state legislators who are directly involved in the charter industry and vote to enrich their enterprise.

This charter industry is not about education. It is about profits and self-enrichment.

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization, Utah
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