This is great news! The Education Law Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center have joined to fight privatization.
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Arizona’s charter industry is riddled with fraud and corrruption, meticulously documented by a year-long investigation in the Arizona Republic and by Curtis Cardine of the Grand Canyon Institute.
The Republican-dominated felt that it needed to pass a “Reform” bill, even though it was full of loopholes that would protect charter fraudsters and grifters.
And so it did. The fake reform bill passed on a party line vote, supported by Republicans, opposed by every Democrat.
So meaningless was the bill that it won the vote of charter operator Sen. Eddie Farnsworth, who made $13.9 million last year when he converted his for-profit charter chain to a nonprofit. Farnsworth gave a speech about why no reform was necessary.
The bill now goes to the House, where Republicans hold a 31-29 advantage.
Republicans rejected amendments from Democrats “to crack down on conflicts of interest and to provide tighter financial transparency on how charters spend tax dollars.
“Sen. Kate Brophy McGee, R-Phoenix, pushed the bill. It had overwhelming support from Arizona’s $1 billion charter school industry, whose lobbyist helped co-write the bill.“
John Merrow asks, who makes the rules? Who decides? He describes the many elementary classrooms he has visited over the course of his four decade career. Usually there is a posted set of rules for behavior. Not at all complicated. Some classrooms, however, have rules that the children devise, which end up looking very similar to the rules posted in other classrooms. It seems everyone wants an atmosphere of respect and good behavior in which to learn and play.
But then, he says, there are the “no excuses” charter schools, which have long lists of offenses that can bring suspension, even expulsion. He uses Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy as a leading example of a punitive environment where children learn to follow orders without question.
The flip side, the draconian opposite that gives children no say in the process, can be found in charter schools that subscribe to the ‘no excuses’ approach. The poster child is Eva Moskowitz and her Success Academies, a chain of charter schools in New York City. A few years ago on my blog I published Success Academies’ draconian list of offenses that can lead to suspension, about 65 of them in all. Here are three that can get a child as young as five a suspension that can last as long as five days: “Slouching/failing to be in ‘Ready to Succeed’ position” more than once, “Getting out of one’s seat without permission at any point during the school day,” and “Making noise in the hallways, in the auditorium, or any general building space without permission.” Her code includes a catch-all, vague offense that all of us are guilty of at times, “Being off-task.” You can find the entire list here.
(Side note: the federal penitentiary that I taught in had fewer rules.)
Does being able to help decide, when you are young, the rules that govern you determine what sort of person you become? Schools are famously undemocratic, so could a little bit of democracy make a difference? Too many schools, school districts, and states treat children as objects–usually scores on some state test–and children absorb that lesson.
Fast forward to adulthood: Why do many adults just fall in line and do pretty much what they are told to do? I am convinced that undemocratic schools–that quench curiosity and punish skepticism–are partially responsible for the mess we are in, with millions of American adults accepting without skepticism or questioning the lies and distortions of Donald Trump, Fox News, Alex Jones, Briebart, and some wild-eyed lefties as well.
The question, I suppose, is whether a democratic society wants “discipline” or “self-discipline.”
Go to The Merrow Report to find this article. I could not create a link for some reason.
When I read this story in Education Week, I found it incredibly condescending. The thesis was that teachers really do well by having a little microphone in their ear, in which a coach whispers advice as they are teaching. I am not a teacher, and I never tell anyone how to teach, but I couldn’t imagine that many teachers would love to have an electronic coach in one of their ears. The only time I previously heard about this was when I was writing about the Bridge International Academy private for-profit schools in Africa, where the teachers were given a script and a tablet and a bug in their ear.
I thought I would wait to hear from someone else who read the story, someone with classroom experience.
Thankfully, Peter Greene came through.
He explains where the idea came from.
Do you want a bug in your ear when you teach with an expert coach in the back of the room whispering tips to you?
It seems that the courts will act when legislators, influenced by NRA lobbying, refuse to do so.
Connecticut’s highest state court overturned a lower court decision and concluded that the families of those murdered in the Sandy Hook massacre of 2012 may sue the manufacturer of the gun used in the killings.
“Connecticut’s Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the manufacturer of the Bushmaster AR-15 rifle can be sued and potentially held liable in connection with the 2012 mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
“The groundbreaking decision overturned a lower-court ruling barring the lawsuit, which was brought by the estates of nine victims killed by Adam Lanza, who was armed with the high-powered rifle during his assault on the school. Bushmaster is owned by Remington.
“The families argued, among other things, that the rifle’s manufacturer and distributor negligently allowed and encouraged civilians to use a weapon suitable only for military and law enforcement use.
“The firearms company had convinced a lower court that a federal law enacted in 2005 limited the liability of firearms manufacturers and dealers, essentially preempting wrongful death suits in state and federal courts.
“The Connecticut high court disagreed. It also said the suit, which seeks unspecified damages for each death, could go forward under that state’s Unfair Trade Practices Law.
“Twenty first-grade children and 6 adults were killed and two others wounded in the attack on Dec. 14, 2012. The Bushmaster that Lanza used had been sold to his mother, according to court documents.
“The number of lives lost in those 264 seconds was made possible by the shooter’s weapon of choice,” the plaintiffs said in their lawsuit. “Plaintiffs seek nothing more and nothing less than accountability” for Bushmaster’s choice to “continue profiting” from selling and marketing the weapon for civilian use, the suit said.”
The task force appointed to reform California’s weak charter school law has 11 members; six of them have ties to the charter industry. Two of the 11 are part of the California Charter School Association, the official lobbying group, which spends $20 million a year to prevent any accountability for charters. How likely is this task force to propose meaningful reforms to stop charter schools from draining resources from the public schools that enroll most of the state’s children? How likely is it to propose meaningful reforms that take away endless appeals by failing charters? How likely is it to prevent small school districts from opening charter schools in districts that do not want them or need them? How likely is it to propose reforms that prevent entrepreneurs and grifters from opening their own charter schools? How likely is it to oust charter chains (the Walmarts of education), storefront charters where teachers meet students only once every three weeks, or charters operated by foreign entities?
Well, we won’t know until we see the final report, will we?
I promised Tony Thurmond that I would suspend judgment until I see the final report, and I will.
Nonetheless it is worrisome to see that somehow the charter industry managed to gain six of the 11 seats on a task force that will make recommendations to reform the industry.
I assumed that Thurmond was responsible for the composition of the task force
I may have been wrong, but honestly I don’t know who made those decisions.
I received an email from a reader in California whose credentials are impeccable, who has a direct tie inside the Governor’s office. This person told me that the committee was selected by Governor Gavin Newsom, not by Tony Thurmond. This made sense because Thurmond was smeared by the charter lobby during the campaign in 2016, which spent nearly $40 million trying to beat him. He has no reason to stack the panel in their favor. But the bottom line is that I don’t know for sure. All I know is what I see. And the optics are not good.
Who wants to stay on the good side of Reed Hastings, Eli Broad, Bill Bloomfield, Arthur Rock, the Fisher Family, and the many other charter-loving billionaires in California?
I wish him well in producing a report that actually reforms the charter industry in California and limits the damage it is now doing to the public schools that enroll nearly 90% of the children in the state. Given the composition of the task force, it won’t be easy.
Even many of the staunchest pro-charter corporate reformers are criticizing virtual charters for their poor outcomes and draining resources from public schools. For instance, Todd Ziebarth of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, criticizes the high rates of “churn” they contribute to, their low graduation rates, and low levels of student proficiency growth. Online charters don’t need to accept the costs that brick and mortar schools must fund, but fair is fair, and virtual schools like Oklahoma’s Epic charters also need to find money for expenses that neighborhood schools aren’t burdened with.
Ziebarth notes that their poor performance means that virtual charters must find other ways to grow. They must pay for their “aggressive marketing” campaigns. For instance, Tulsa Public Radio reports, “Epic uses giveaways of big-ticket items like concert tickets to reward referrals, and it recently opened a heavily branded children’s play area at (Oklahoma City’s) Penn Square Mall.”
https://nondoc.com/2018/09/21/okleg-should-conduct-cost-benefit-analysis-of-virtual-charters/
And recently, Epic supporters were forced to spend $180,000 for the 2018 political campaign season. Co-founder Ben Harris said that the reason why Epic ramped up donations was “we kinda felt like it was us against the entire traditional education establishment.”
I kid the private charter “juggernaut” leader. But, seriously, he may be facing more unanticipated operating costs. Until recently Epic has successfully evaded efforts to hold the virtual charters accountable. Republican Senator Ron Sharp became so frustrated at trying to obtain meaningful data on Epic’s performance that he used a wonky state-of-the-art research term to characterize the quality of their numbers; he said, “This is crap.”
After Epic Superintendent David Chaney was criticized for “skewing” the data, Chaney replied that they just did things “differently.”
https://nondoc.com/2018/09/21/okleg-should-conduct-cost-benefit-analysis-of-virtual-charters/
But more costs may be coming to the virtual charter. A previous investigation into 2013 allegations of fraud by the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation was turned over to the Attorney General’s Office, but no charges were filed and no official conclusions were announced. But the Tulsa World’s Andrea Eger reports that the OSBI is “once again” investigating Epic, so it is “now the target of scrutiny by state and federal law enforcement in addition to state lawmakers.”
Apparently Epic is being investigated for dually enrolling students who attend private schools. Eger reports that charter authorizers are provided a contract template which “specifically prohibits the funding or offering of any instruction to home-schooled students or private school students.” It also explains that “charter schools ‘shall implement and enforce policies and procedures prohibiting enrollment of students on a part time basis,’ with one or two limited exceptions allowed under state law.”
Epic’s Harris responded to questions on whether it is illegal to be paid for educating students attending other private schools by saying, “Not to our knowledge. And I would also say that we’re not aware of the specific situations that you’re talking about. It’s hard to imagine how they could fulfill our requirements while going to another school full time.”
Harris also told the World, “We don’t think that our private company should have to make any disclosures that any other private company shouldn’t have just because who our customers are.” Eger explained however, that Epic’s co-founders are “both owners of Epic Youth Services LLC, a separate company with which the school contracts for its operation. That contract indicates an annual cost of $125,000 for ‘development services’” plus a 10 percent share of the school’s collected revenues as an ‘indirect cost allocation.’”
Eger “put that 10 percent into context,” explaining that “Epic Charter Schools has been allocated $112.9 million in state aid funding alone for fiscal year 2019.
Ironically, one of the institutions where potential misdeeds are being exposed is Facebook! The World reported:
Shelly Hickman, the school’s assistant superintendent for external affairs, then acknowledged that she had participated in an Epic parent Facebook group discussion just last week in which multiple Epic parents openly discussed how their children were enrolled in private schools and home school cooperatives and even receive credit from their Epic teachers for time spent and work done in those outside entities.
Despite its generous donations to 78 candidates for the legislature and state offices, pressure has increased since an interim legislative committee was unable to pry meaningful information from Epic this fall. Then Epic received $38.7 million in annual, midyear adjustments, as the Oklahoma City (OKCPS) and Tulsa (TPS) districts each faced $2.1 million in cuts. Tulsa Superintendent Deborah Gist, a longtime school choice advocate, complained that her district lost 496 students to Epic in the fall semester, as 196 Epic students returned to the TPS.
It won’t be easy to find understandable accountability information in the new Oklahoma Report Cards, but now that the press that is doing a great job in investigating Epic’s finance, they might also find readers interested in the virtual schools accountability data. In 2018, two Epic districts, Epic One on One Charter and Epic Blended Learning Charter, had nine schools. According to the Report Card, they enrolled 13,532. They reported test scores for 4,164 students or about 30 percent of their enrollees.
Despite their huge attrition rate, the Report Card said that both systems had attendance rates exceeding 99 percent.
Epic One on One reported 8,059 enrollees. It isn’t easy to find a meaningful presentation of the test score progress on its 2,433 test takers, but the seemingly hidden outcomes of the minority who persist until the spring testing is shocking. About 23 percent progressed to higher achievement levels. About 36 percent of students remained on the same levels, while over 41 dropped into lower performance levels.
In theory, Epic’s Blended Learning charter would produce better outcomes. But, just over 25 percent progressed to higher achievement level. Around 36 percent of students remained on the same levels, while a little over 38 percent dropped into lower performance levels.
https://oklaschools.com/district/growth/1115/
https://oklaschools.com/district/growth/548/
Although the recent headlines have been dominated by Eger’s excellent reporting, for several years Oklahoma Watch’s Jennifer Palmer has done great investigative reporting on Epic. Until she documented Epic’s complex story, I just assumed that the virtual charter was just a case of socialism for the rich, a drag on public education funding which helped some kids who were uncomfortable in public schools but which damaged many more by increasing transiency. I no longer see it as an un-slayable dragon that must be endured. And wouldn’t it be great to see Epic held accountable by today’s federal government, as well as Facebook posts?
The Texas Commissioner of Education Mike Morath (non-educator) revealed that more than 100,000 students were affected by computer glitches on state tests.
“More than 100,000 Texas students were affected by computer glitches on standardized tests this year, tens of thousands more than previously estimated, Education Commissioner Mike Morath told the State Board of Education during a briefing on Wednesday morning.
“In May, Morath threw out 71,000 students’ results for the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness and fined Educational Testing Service, the New Jersey company that administered and graded the test, $100,000 for the computer glitches. Morath also has waived promotion requirements tied to STAAR scores for fifth and eighth graders affected by the glitches.
“At the Wednesday meeting, Morath said 41,702 students were affected by slow connectivity during testing in April, while another 58,743 experienced slowdowns or had trouble logging into computerized tests in May. The total of 100,445 affected students marks a roughly 30,000-student increase from Morath’s previous estimate of the number who encountered computer problems.”
Morath has taken no action to investigate studies that show the tests are invalid.
Writing in Valerie Strauss’s “Answer Sheet” blog in the Washington Post, Fed Ingram explains why Florida has a massive teacher shortage. Ingram was Miami-Dade County’s Teacher of the Year in 2006 and he is now president of the Florida Education Association.
He writes that conditions for teachers are so bad that the state is experiencing a “silent strike” as teachers leave.
Halfway through this school year, more than 2,200 vacancies hobble Florida’s public schools. In 2018, the Florida Board of Education identified critical teacher shortages in English, mathematics, reading, general science, physical science and other subjects.
Recent graduates of schools of education ignore Florida recruiters at job fairs. Many educators who began teaching careers here are leaving our classrooms with no plans to return. We’re experiencing a “silent strike.”
Children living in districts that are not fully staffed are likely to wind up in with an overworked substitute in an overcrowded classroom or with a teacher untrained in the subject she or he has been hired to teach…
The Sunshine State ranks 45th in the nation in teacher pay with salaries $10,000 less than the national average. Meanwhile the cost of living here is 10 percent higher than in the rest of the United States.
Facing high costs and low pay, Florida’s teachers often work second jobs. Many teachers with advanced degrees wait tables or drive for Uber — and some teachers sell their own plasma to make ends meet.
It’s no secret that shortsighted policies have starved Florida schools of much-needed funds for years on end. Bogus schemes to use short-term bonuses to make up for long-term deficits in salaries for Florida teachers haven’t worked either.
Money isn’t the only problem. Too many politicians treat public schools and the people who work in them as punching bags. When the profession is attacked daily; when the contribution teachers make to students and communities goes unrecognized; when bureaucrats who’ve never spent a day in a classroom tell teachers how to do their job — then it becomes difficult to attract and retain dedicated and qualified education professionals.
The state’s leaders seem dimly aware of these problems but their priority right now is expanding voucher programs and increasing charter schools. In voucher schools–most of them religious–teachers do not need a college degree or certification. The current omnibus bill, SB7070, relies on bonuses not salary increases and seeks to lower standards for teachers to boost the supply of teachers. These are all incredibly bad ideas, but Florida is run by people who really don’t care about education or teachers or the future of the state. This, after all, is the state that Betsy DeVos considers a model for the nation because of its vouchers, its charter schools, its high stakes testing, its school report cards, and….its low salaries for teachers. Education on the cheap.
I recently posted Leonie Haimson’s critique of the program called “Teach to One.”
John Pane, one of the authors of the RAND evaluation, wrote to say that he did not agree with Leonie’s characterization. I told him that I would publish his letter and Leonie’s response.
He wrote this letter:
On March 4, 2018 you published this blog entry, “Leonie Haimson: Reality Vs. Hype in “Teach to One” Program,” excerpting from Leonie Haimson’s blog. Your excerpt included this paragraph about my own research (with colleagues) and my public statements:
“The most recent RAND analysis of schools that used personalized learning programs that received funding through the Next Generation Learning initiative, which have included both Summit and Teach to One, concluded there were small and mostly insignificant gains in achievement at these schools, and their students were more likely to feel alienated and unsafe compared to matched students at similar schools. The overall results caused John Pane, the lead RAND researcher, to say to Ed Week that ‘the evidence base [for these schools] is very weak at this point.’“
This paragraph by Haimson has numerous false and misleading statements. Here I summarize my critique, excerpting the original paragraph:
“The most recent RAND analysis of schools that used personalized learning programs that received funding through the Next Generation Learning initiative, which have included both Summit and Teach to One, …”
None of the schools in our sample reported using Teach to One (TtO) among the 194 education technology products they mentioned. Our sample includes schools in the Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC) wave IIIa and wave IV programs, a subset of all the NGLC initiatives. Haimson points to blog posts by NGLC about Summit and TtO, but that does not mean our study included them.
“…included both Summit and Teach to One, concluded there were small and mostly insignificant gains in achievement at these schools, …”
Our conclusions were about the whole sample of schools, and did not single out any particular schools as is implied by juxtaposing “Summit and Teach to One” with “these schools.” Our concluding remarks related to achievement did not say “small and mostly insignificant.” What we actually said was, “Students in NGLC schools experienced positive achievement effects in mathematics and reading, although the effects were only statistically significant in mathematics. On average, students overcame gaps relative to national norms after two years in NGLC schools. Students at all levels of achievement relative to grade-level norms appeared to benefit. Results varied widely across schools and appeared strongest in the middle grades.”
“… and their students were more likely to feel alienated and unsafe compared to matched students at similar schools”
This was not a conclusion of our report. In a supplemental appendix we did compare results from our sample (again, the whole sample of schools in the study, none of which reported using TtO) to a national sample. Our method did not use “matched students at similar schools.” Given data limitations, we were able to make the student samples similar (through weighting) only on grade level, gender, and broad classifications of geographic locale (e.g., urban vs. suburban). Even after weighting, we suspect the high-minority, high-poverty schools in the NGLC sample may be located in more distressed communities than the national survey counterparts, and that this could be related to feelings of safety. Indeed, fewer NGLC students (78 vs. 82 percent) agreed that “I feel safe in this school,” but this small difference cannot be attributed to personalized learning and has no direct relevance to TtO. None of our survey items or reports used the word “alienated.” Possibly related, 77 percent of NGLC students agreed that “at least one adult in this school knows me well” and “I feel good about being in this school,” 76 percent agreed that “I care about this school” and 72 percent agreed “I am an important part of my school community.”
The overall results caused John Pane, the lead RAND researcher, to say to Ed Week that ‘the evidence base [for these schools] is very weak at this point.’“
This EdWeek article clearly states that it is about “what K-12 educators and policymakers need to know about the research on personalized learning” broadly. Quoting accurately, “RAND has found some positive results, including modest achievement gains in some of the Gates-funded personalized-learning schools. But overall, ‘the evidence base is very weak at this point, Pane said.” There is no justification for Haimson to insert “[for these schools]” into my quoted remark. It appears as though Haimson is attempting to give a misleading impression that I was specifically talking about Summit and TtO rather than the entire body of personalized learning research.
I find it very unfortunate that you accepted Haimson’s claims without fact checking, and increased their visibility and attention through your own platform.
I am requesting that you please issue a correction in a way that previous readers of your March 4 post will likely notice. You may include this letter if you wish.
With regards,
John Pane
RAND Corporation
I forwarded John Pane’s letter to Leonie Haimson. She responded as follows:
Hi John – the Rand report was only a small part of my post on TTO which is here – I counted one short paragraph out of nearly one hundred.
Nevertheless, Diane: Please go ahead and print John’s letter in full and I will link to the letter in my blog. It is unfortunate that the specific online program names were left out of the RAND evaluation. I had wrongly assumed that TTO was included since it is one of the most heavily funded and promoted of the Next Generation Learning Challenge “personalized learning” programs, by Gates and others.
I would also like to point out that the following survey stats John includes from the NGLC schools omit the results from the comparison schools, as cited in the appendix of the Rand report:
Possibly related, 77 percent of NGLC students agreed that “at least one adult in this school knows me well” [compared to 86% of the national sample] and “I feel good about being in this school,” [vs. 89% of the national sample] 76 percent agreed that “I care about this school” [vs. 87% of the national sample] and 72 percent agreed “I am an important part of my school community.” [compared to 79% of the national sample.]
In addition, the students at the personalized learning schools were more likely to say that that “their classes do not keep their attention, and they get bored” compared to the national sample (30% to 23%). Only 35% of students at the NGLC schools said that “learning is enjoyable” compared to 45% of the national sample. With results like this it is very difficult to see support for the claim that students at personalized learning schools are more engaged in their coursework, feel more connected and have more agency, as is often claimed.
Now we know that TTO students aren’t included in these surveys but there is no reason to assume that the responses would be significantly different until and unless New Classrooms releases their own survey results. And we do have the results from Mountain View school, which showed a 413% increase in the number of students who said they hated math as a result.
Nor does John’s response relate to the larger question of how difficult it is to use MAP scores to evaluate these programs, especially ones that aren’t disaggregated by race or economic status, which also calls into question the conclusions of the MarGready report. One might expect that with all the data that NWEA has by now they would have done that by now; any thoughts on that, John?
Finally, it is extremely unfortunate that Gates, Zuckerberg etc. haven’t bothered to commission any truly randomized small-scale evaluation of Summit, TTO or any of the other PL programs they have so heavily funded and promoted before expanding their reach and subjecting hundreds of thousands of students to them. Summit has rejected any independent evaluation of its results. One can only speculate why.
Thanks,
Leonie Haimson
