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A TEACHER Writes a Great Review of SLAYING GOLIATH in the Washington Post!

By dianeravitch
February 1, 2020 //
6

Melanie McCabe, an English teacher at Yorktown High School in Arlington, Virginia, and an author, wrote this terrific and accurate review of SLAYING GOLIATH.

Unlike the reviewer for the New York Times, who is not a teacher and gives no hint of ever having set foot in a classroom since she finished school and college, Melanie McCabe knows full well about the billionaire-funded attacks on public schools and their teachers, which continue to seek their privatization of our public schools and to impose business ideas about closing schools based on spurious data.

Teachers get it. Teachers know that their students are being strangled by high-stakes testing and their schools are deprived of resources when forced to compete with charters and vouchers, which do not offer better education than the public schools they harm.

McCabe writes:

[Ravitch] has written a thought-provoking, painstakingly researched account of those who have sought to privatize and monetize America’s schools. She calls them the “Disrupters,” and they are indeed a foe with all the intimidating strength of Goliath. Confronting this opponent is the “Resistance”: the ordinary teachers, parents and citizens who are fighting back and winning.

Ravitch exposes the self-serving motivations of the Disrupters — many of them among the richest people in America, such as the Walton family, Bill Gates, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, the Koch brothers and Mark Zuckerberg. Their belief that schools should be operated as businesses, with private ownership and data-driven decision-making, has resulted in dismal standardized test scores, the closure of public schools and the demonizing of teachers. The charter schools they have championed and have been enriched by have not resulted in promised improvements, but instead have drained much-needed funds from struggling public schools. The Disrupters are not supporters of education, Ravitch argues; rather, they are in pursuit of the money to be made not only by running charter schools but also through involvement in such lucrative industries as student testing, educational hardware and software, curriculum development, and consulting services…

Though the history of the school reform movement and its impact on schools and students are alarming, the story Ravitch sets out to tell is not one of hand-wringing despair; rather, it is a heartening account of how teachers, parents and union leaders across the nation have been fighting against the damage caused by the Disrupters. The Resistance opposes privatization and misuse or overuse of standardized testing, and seeks adequate compensation for teachers and funding for public schools that has too long been diverted to charter schools….

Ravitch’s message is not one of gloom and doom, but rather she offers a rallying cry that shows how people everywhere are wising up and fighting back. “The great lesson of this story is that billionaires should not be allowed to buy democracy, although they are certainly trying to do so,” Ravitch writes. “The power of their money can be defeated by the power of voters.”

There is much to learn from this book, and much inspiration to be found. The book is not written as a how-to guide for the Resistance. It is a scrupulously thorough study of a tumultuous period in American education. However, the conscientious reader who seeks strategies to combat the pervasive damage done by the Disrupters will find useful information here, along with affirmation that fighting back is possible. To paraphrase one of the chapter titles, Goliath has stumbled. The reign of terror is not yet over, but it has been brought to its knees.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Privatization, Testing, Vouchers

Peter Greene: Will Pennsylvania Dare to Regulate Its Failing Cyber Charter Industry?

By dianeravitch
January 24, 2020 //
7

Peter Greene writes here about the possibility that legislators might attempt to limit the damage done by the cyber charter industry, which is protected by armor of cash and campaign contributions.

Numerous studies, including one by the charter-friendly CREDO of Stanford, have found that students in cyber charters don’t learn much. Some studies have shown that cyber charters don’t learn anything.

But the industry is immensely profitable, because the cyber charters get paid full state tuition and provide almost nothing, unlike a brick and mortar school that must provide heat, electricity, a custodian, a library, transportation, etc. Cyber charters make all those things unnecessary, but at the same time that provide as meager an education as is possible.

Greene writes:

Rep. Curt Sonney is a GOP top dog in the Pennsylvania Education Committee, and he’s never been known as a close friend of public schools. But he represents Erie, a district that has been absolutely gutted by school choice, so maybe that’s why he has spent the last couple of years nipping at the heels of Pennsylvania’s thriving cyber charter industry.

Harrisburg just had hearings on his latest proposal, a bill that he first announced last October and which has something for virtually everyone to hate.

Pennsylvania cyber schools are an absolute mess, barely covered by laws that never anticipated such a thing and protected by a massive pile of money thrown both at lobbying and campaign contributions.

The cybers do offer a service that is useful for some students (I personally know of one such case). But they also provide a quick exit for parents who don’t want to deal with truancy issues or other disciplinary problems. Their results are generally very poor (none have ever been ranked proficient on the Big Standardized Test), and state oversight is so lousy that many were allowed to continue operating for years without ever having renewed their charters.

But what really has drawn the wrath of even people who don’t pay much attention to education policy is that they are expensive as hell. Because the charter laws didn’t really anticipate this cyber-development, cyber-charters are paid at the same rate as a brick-and-mortar charter. So an individual student may bring in $10-$20K, but costs the cyber charter the price of one computer, one printer, and 1/250th of an on-line teacher. The profit margin is huge, but so is the cost to local districts, with poorer districts in the state being hit the worst.

A year ago, there was a bill floating around Harrisburg to change the game– if a local district opened a cyber-school, then any families that wanted to send their kid to an out-of-district cyberwould have to foot the bill themselves.

The bill (HB 1897) is a bit involved, and we’ll go digging in a moment, but the two headline items are this: all cyber-charters will be shut down, and all school districts will offer cyber education. Now, to look for some of those devilish details.

Betsy DeVos is a huge fan of cyber charters and has even invested in them.

Be that as it may, they are a financial success and an education failure.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Failure, Virtual Charter Schools

Wendy Lecker on Eli Broad: The Wannabee Koch Brother

By dianeravitch
January 24, 2020 //
4

Wendy Lecker is a civil rights lawyer who writes frequently for the Stamford (Connecticut) Advocate and is a regular contributor to the Hearst Connecticut Media Group.

Recently she wrote about Yale’s agreement to adopt Eli Broad’s school-wrecking “Broad Institute” in return for a donation of $100 million. The Broad Institute is a vanity project by a billionaire who readily admits he knows nothing about education but enjoys disrupting school districts because he can.

Lecker writes:

Wendy Lecker: Putting a price tag on public schools

When it comes to using one’s fortune to influence American policy, billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch stand out.
The Kochs have spent a fortune pushing American politics and policy to the right. Their secretive organization, Americans for Prosperity, is a major player in anti-labor activities, such as Wisconsin’s slashing of union rights, and fighting minimum wage increases nationwide. The Kochs poured money into the American Legislative Exchange Council (“ALEC”) a stealth lobby organization that writes bills that advance Koch industries’ interests specifically and the Koch’s extreme free market ideology in general, and then gets legislators all over the country to introduce them.
They have also donated millions of dollars to establish research centers at universities to push their brand of unregulated capitalism. They impose conditions and performance obligations on the donations, interfere in hiring decisions, and make curriculum and programming decisions. The Kochs often demand pre-approval of any public statements and include anti-transparency provisions in donor agreements. This research is then cited as the scholarly basis for Congressional decisions favoring the Kochs’ interests. The Kochs are proud of their integrated strategy to build a pipeline of influence. The president of the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation boasted that “(n)o one else has this infrastructure.”
Eli Broad, a billionaire who made his fortune through real estate and insurance, seeks to build a Koch-style infrastructure to push his education reform ideology. Broad recently announced that, with a $100 million donation, he is bringing his Broad Center to Yale’s School of Management (“SOM”).
The Broad Center trains school district leaders and those who seek to influence education policy. The center emphasizes applying business principles to running school districts and de-emphasizes education. In seeking candidates, the Broad Center prioritizes “a strong and direct alignment with specific (Broad Center) reform priorities” — which include school privatization and weakening labor protections. The Center openly aims to reshape American public education according to Broad’s ideology.
Eli Broad is a major player in some of the most aggressive — and controversial- education reform policies in America. Like the Kochs, Broad employs an integrated strategy of influence. For example, he bankrolled the education reform slate in the Los Angeles 2018 school board election. His star beneficiary, charter operator Ref Rodriguez, later resigned from the board and pled guilty to felony election fraud conspiracy. Broad also poured millions into Broad alumnus and charter operator Marshall Tuck’s 2018 unsuccessful campaign for California State Superintendent.
Broad used his money and influence to push the Education Achievement Authority (EAA) to run Detroit’s public schools. He provided significant funding and even summoned Broad alumnus and then Kansas City superintendent, John Covington, to be its first chancellor. Covington had wreaked havoc on Kansas City, firing hundreds of teachers and replacing them with inexperienced Teach for America members, and imposing other disruptive reforms. After his chaotic departure, Kansas City’s school district lost its accreditation. It then abandoned Covington’s reforms to regain its footing.
Covington left the EAA abruptly after charges of questionable spending, and the Broad Center hired him. The EAA was a devastating failure, plagued by financial mismanagement and abysmal academic failures.
A succession of Broad alumni ran Tennessee’s failed Achievement School District, which was also plagued by financial mismanagement and poor student achievement — worse than in schools under local district control.
Broad alumni were forced out of Seattle and Los Angeles amid financial impropriety, and Barbara Byrd Bennett, a Broad executive coach, is in federal prison after pleading guilty to a bribery scandal in which she engaged while head of Chicago Public Schools.
These scandals reflect poorly on Broad’s emphasis on applying business practices to school districts.
Much like the Koch’s foray into higher education, Broad’s move to SOM seems like an effort to profit from Yale’s name and perhaps sanitize the questionable track record of Broad alumni. Since Yale has no school of education — unlike other universities in New Haven — Broad’s interest is not to bolster any knowledge of how children can learn successfully.
In an effort to discern how much of the Koch playbook Broad is employing at Yale, I asked SOM about Broad’s involvement in the governance, curriculum, programming and hiring at SOM’s new center. After first indicating they would run these questions by SOM’s dean, SOM now fails to respond, despite my request for follow-up. Apparently, SOM’s Broad Center is adopting the Koch’s lack of transparency.
It is disturbing that a major university is helping enlarge the Broad pipeline, which has funneled scandal and upheaval across American public schools.
Wendy Lecker is a columnist for the Hearst Connecticut Media Group and is senior attorney at the Education Law Center.
Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Education Reform, Failure, Koch Brothers

Gary Rubinstein: The Collapse of the Tennessee “Achievement School District”

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2020 //
15

Gary Rubinstein has been following the Tennessee Achievement School District since its inception and reporting annually on its failure. The ASD was funded by $100 million from the Obama-Duncan “Race to the Top.” The theory behind the ASD was that students had low test scores because they attended public schools with bad teachers. Take the same students in the same schools, turn them over to charter operators, and their test scores would soar. The theory was wrong.

Gary writes about it here. 

Since 2011 I have been following the biggest, and most predictable, disasters of the education reform movement — the Tennessee Achievement School District (ASD).  It was formed in a perfect storm of reform theory.  First, Tennessee won Race To The Top money.  Then they hired a TFA-alum and the ex-husband of Michelle Rhee, Kevin Huffman to be their state commissioner.  Then he hired TFA-alum and charter school founder Chris Barbic to design and run the ASD.  The initial promise of the ASD was that they would take schools in the bottom 5% and convert them into charter schools in order to ‘catapult’ them into the top 25% in five years.  They started with 6 schools in 2012 and grew to over 30 schools within a few years.

They completely failed at this mission.  Chris Barbic resigned, Kevin Huffman resigned, Barbic’s replacement resigned, Barbic’s replacement’s replacement resigned.  Of the 30 schools they nearly all stayed in the bottom 5% except a few that catapulted into the bottom 10%.

The new education commissioner of Tennessee is also a TFA alum with ideas similar to Huffman.  She promised, however, to get a handle on the ASD and what to do about its failure.  After a listening tour around the state she made, it seemed at first, a decision that was long overdue.

Chalkbeat TN recently had a post with the enticing title ‘All 30 schools in Tennessee’s turnaround district would exit by 2022 in a massive restructuring proposal.’  It would seem like this is good news.  The ASD was such a costly failure, costing about $100 million over the years I think, the only thing to do was to put it out of its misery and dissolve it completely.

But I’ve been studying reformers enough over the years not to get too excited about this.  The headline would make the most optimistic readers think that the 30 schools going back to the district would again become public schools.  The charter schools supposedly traded flexibility for accountability so their failure to deliver on their promises should result in them being sent packing.

But according to the article, it is not clear yet if being returned to the district means that they will become public schools again.  Also they say that there still will be an ASD after this.  Now there can’t be a school district with zero schools, so what’s going on?

I think, and I hope I’m wrong about this, that with the failure of the ASD there was no way that they could justify adding more schools to it.  But by ‘returning’ the 30 schools back to their districts, and probably keeping them as charters, there will now be room to add more schools in the bottom 5% to the re-booted ASD.  If this is what happens, the ASD won’t be disappearing or even shrinking, it will be expanding.  There will be the 30 schools that are still charters, but just operating as part of the district they have been returned to.  And then there will be another 20 schools, maybe, that are in the new ASD.  (They actually call it the ASD 2.0 in the state slide show)

Gary suspects a bait-and-switch, like a businessman declaring bankruptcy, then reappearing with a new name and more money.

He will keep watch for us.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Failure, Privatization, Race to the Top, Tennessee

Bernie Sanders Calls for an End to Annual Standardized Testing

By dianeravitch
January 8, 2020 //
52

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was one of the few members of the U.S. Senate to vote against No Child Left Behind when it was approved by Congress in 2001.

Today is the anniversary of the signing of that law.

Sanders writes that the federal mandate for annual testing in grades 3-8 has been an expensive failure.

In this article in USA Today, Sanders calls for an end to the NCLB mandate, which remained in place through Race to the Top and the Every Students Succeeds Act of 2015 (Every student succeeds is another way of saying “no child left behind.”)

He writes:

Wednesday marks 18 years since the signing into law of No Child Left Behind, one of the worst pieces of legislation in our nation’s history. In December 2001, I voted against NCLB because it was as clear to me then, as it is now, that so-called school choice and high-stakes standardized testing would not improve our schools or enhance our children’s ability to learn. We do not need an education system in which kids are simply taught to take tests. We need a system in which kids learn and grow in a holistic manner. 

Under NCLB, standardized tests were utilized to hold public schools and teachers “accountable” for student outcomes. As a result, some schools that underperformed were closed and their teachers and unions blamed. 

The long-term effects of this approach have been disastrous. NCLB perpetuated the myth of public schools and teachers as failing, which opened the door for the spread of school voucher programs and charter schools that we have today. Some of these charter schools are operated by for-profits; many of them are nonunion and are not publicly accountable.

One error here: 90% of charters are non-union, not “many.” That is why charters have the enthusiastic support of right-wingers like the Waltons, DeVos, Koch, and other billionaires (see Slaying Goliath for a comprehensive list of the billionaires, foundations, and corporations that support testing and charters)

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Failure, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Privatization, Race to the Top, Testing

Charlotte, N.C.: Voucher School Abruptly Closes Mid-Year

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2020 //
11

The Legacy Prep School in Charlotte, North Carolina, closed its doors at the end of the holidays, leaving parents and students on their own to find a school.

Legacy Prep was a private school that relied on vouchers from the state.

Parents were stunned.

“Yes, 100% caught off-guard,” said Jackie Davis, whose son attends Legacy Prep. 

On Friday, she and other parents whose children were enjoying holiday break, received an email from Stacey Rose, the school’s principal, that told them the school would not re-open on January 7th due to funding issues. 

“It is with a heavy heart that I must inform you that Legacy Preparatory will have to close its doors and cease all operations immediately.  As such, we will not reopen for classes on January 7th (or any time thereafter) as originally planned,” Rose wrote in-part.

“It’s a burden,” Davis said. “I’m thinking I’m in a nightmare, in a dream, and I haven’t woke up from it.”

She now has just days to go through the headache of finding her son a new school to attend so he can stay on track. 

“It’s a shock,” she said. “First thing that crossed my mind was what about I going to do with my son.”

The letter that was sent to parents noted that the school could not stay open due to a lack of funding. 

“Our main school investor did not deliver on his promise to provide the additional finances needed to accompany the scholarship funds that are required to run the school through June,” Rose wrote in-part. 

Davis said the private school charges $4,200 per student for the year, the cheapest she could find in the Charlotte-area when she looked for schools to send her son. 

She said she doesn’t want to send her son to CMS because she wants to ensure her son gets the one-on-one attention he needs to succeed. 

The principal offered to place them in an online cybercharter, which provides no personal contact at all.

Keung Hui, a reporter for the “News Observer’ tweeted:

Legacy Prep, which abruptly closed Friday, got $283,500 this year from NC for 135 voucher students. The private school is in same building & led by same principal when Charlotte Learning Academy was there before charter was not renewed in spring. #nced

The school was a charter that was not renewed, then a voucher school that failed.

Thats the market: Instability is a feature, not a bug.

 

Categories Accountability, Closing schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, North Carolina, Privatization, Vouchers

Jan Resseger: Eli Broad and the $100 Million He Paid to Re-Brand His Faux-Leadership Center

By dianeravitch
January 4, 2020 //
16

Jan Resseger reviews the story of Eli Broad and his leadership program, whose graduates have brought top-down management ideas and disruption wherever they go.

To keep the program alive, despite its long history of failure, Broad gave Yale University $100 million.

The Broad Leadership Institute is accredited (I have repeatedly called in unaccredited, but a reader pointed out to me that it was accredited in 2015). The fact that it is accredited is surprising, since I can’t find any evidence on the website of a faculty, a library, or any of the regular trappings of a genuine postgraduate program. Its accreditation is as bizarre as that of Relay “Graduate School of Education,” which has no one on its “faculty” with an earned doctorate (not yet, anyway), no library, no courses in the history or sociology or economics of education, no studies in child or adolescent psychology, no scholars or researchers.

Resseger writes:

The editors of PR Watch at the Center for Media and Democracy explain the curriculum of Broad’s Superintendent’s Academy and Urban Residency Program: “The Broad training curriculum for education minimizes subject areas like core education (10% of curriculum time). Instead it emphasizes ‘reform priorities’ (40%), ‘reform accelerators’ (30%), and systems-level management (nearly 20%). Training includes time with think tanks, businesses, and charter network administrators. Training does not prioritize classroom teachers, public school principals, or people knowledgeable about delivery of public education.”

LA Times education reporter, Howard Blume covered Eli Broad’s recent $100 million gift to Yale and the pending move of the Broad Center from California to New Haven: “The Broad Center, which has attracted praise and suspicion for its training of school district leaders, will move from Los Angeles to Yale University, along with a $100-million gift provided by founder Eli Broad… The donation is the largest ever for the Yale School of Management (SOM) and will help fund a master’s program for public education leaders and advanced leadership training for top school system executives—efforts that had been undertaken by the center in Los Angeles…. The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation has been the primary funder of the Broad Center, and in most years is the only one according to the center. The foundation has contributed $143.5 million to the center since 2001. The Broad Center’s budget for 2019 is $15 million.”

The Broad Center is a vanity projects, in most years wholly funded by one man. Now his vanity project will come with a Yale diploma.

Resseger reviews her clippings. It is one story after another of failure.

The song in “Fiddler on the Roof” says “When You’re Rich, They Think You Really Know.” Broad has demonstrated that he knows nothing about how to reform or fix schools. But because he is really rich, a billionaire, he can buy respectability for his failed management training program.

 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Failure

Angie Sullivan Tells Every Nevada Legislator to Read SLAYING GOLIATH

By dianeravitch
January 3, 2020 //
9

Angie Sullivan teaches in a Title 1 elementary school in Carson County, Nevada. She teaches the children who were left behind.

She sent this post to every legislator in Nevada:

A small group of vocal teachers, parents, and activists have been publicly concerned about national public school privatization for two decades.  
 
Diane Ravitch is the leader of that pack.  
 
Her new book is coming out soon.  
 
Her last books included characters who are national culprits in destroying American Public Schools.  Some have come from my state of Nevada.  
 
Reform was meant to change a system of education that needed to change.  Still needs change. Admittedly we need to improve.  No one argues against that.  Teachers have always been willing to improve.  
 
This reform was not ever meant to improve.  
 
Change came.   The wrong kind.  
 
Big bad horrific and public school destroying change came.   
 
It was bad change bought by corporations who do not love children, will not love children, and seek money even if harm comes to children. 
 
Wrecking ball.  
 
National level well funded and crushing. 
 
Reformers will not use the data – they supposedly worshipped – to admit – they were wrong. 
 
Devastatingly wrong. 
 
Wrong in ways that were really destructive over two generations.   Destroying the central fabric of America – attacking our local public schools.  Kids were warehoused in experiments.  Kids without teachers.   Kids hooked up to innovations that made money but did not educated.  
Billions spent on reforms:  disruption, return on investment, testing, take over, turnaround, triggering, attacking teachers, standardization, score chasing has barely moved American Students on the NAEP Assessments.  
 
The data is back. 
Business reformers failed.   Return on investment was zero.  
 
Reform has been successful at systematically privatizing huge amounts of education cash.  It has segregated.  It has devastated.  It has destroyed public school communities.  And disenfranchised students are further behind than ever before. 
 
The teachers were crushed and millions left. 
 
This expensive business-type reform did not improve education.  
 
Unfortunately, the folks driving reform were not teachers – nor were they interested in authentic education.   Billionaires who were successful in business took over.  They bought the top levels of government and spread cash from the top down.  Both parties.   Anyone with power.   And policy makers and leadership sold out hard. Money taken from public schools to be spent on scams and fads. 
Billions wasted.   
 
Money and people who chase dollars should never be in charge of education policy.  Neoliberals and corporations who hide from liability will never create the synergy, caring, and community building that teachers can do in a school building. 
 
Now the billionaires know – public school teachers will fight.  Activists will engage.  Those who love children will activate. 
 
Take that Goliath.
 
A band of loud people who care – will fight with any small stone we can find. 
We are not scared – because we are right.  
 
Time for policy makers and leadership to buy a book.  
 
O God hear the words of my mouth – hold us in Your Hand because we are small against those seeking to harm kids.  
 
The Teacher,
Angie Sullivan. 

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, For-Profit, Nevada, Privatization, Testing, Vouchers

Audrey Watters: The Most Important Post of the Decade: The 100 Worst EdTech Disasters of the Decade

By dianeravitch
December 31, 2019 //
60

I just opened my email and discovered this brilliant post by Audrey Watters, whose critical voice on EdTech is indispensable.

Watters lists the 100 biggest EdTech debacles of the past decade, and seeing them all in one place is astonishing.

What strikes me is the combination of unadulterated arrogance (i.e., chutzpah), coupled with repeated failures.

What is also impressive are the number of entries that were hailed by the media or by assorted journalists, then slipped quietly down the drain, without impairing the reputation of the huckster who took the money and ran.

Again and again, we encounter EdTech start-ups and innovations that are greeted with wild acclaim and hype, but whose collapse is ignored as the parade moves on to the next overpromised miracle technology.

Whatever happened to the promise that half of all courses in school would be taught online by this year (false) or that most colleges and universities would die because of the rise of the MOOC (false)? Why do virtual charter schools make money even though they have horrible outcomes for students (lies, lies, lies)?

This post is stuffed with flash-in-the-pan technological disruptions that planned to “revolutionize” education, from K-12 through higher education but then tanked.

Please read it. Share it with your friends and colleagues.

Lessons: Learn humility. Believe in the power of human beings, not machines designed to replace them. Don’t let them sell you stuff designed to control the brains, emotions, and social development of students. Be wary. Be skeptical. Protect your privacy and the privacy of children.

Protect your intellectual freedom.

Read Audrey Watters.

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Education Reform, Evil, Failure, Fake, Hoax, Lies, Philanthropy, Technology

Angie Sullivan: The Charter Industry in Nevada is Asleep at the Wheel, Gone Off the Road, Crashed into a Ditch

By dianeravitch
December 22, 2019 //
0

Angie Sullivan is a teacher in a Title 1 elementary school in Las Vegas. She regularly writes the members of the Nevada legislature to share her outrage about the underfunding of the state’s neediest schools and the state’s waste of money on charter schools, which dominate the state’s list of the lowest performing schools.

Here is her latest:

 

Peter Greene in Forbes
Still Asleep At The Wheel 
What happened?  
Pile of fraud and graft.  
These charter titles got money and did what?   
This charter changed its name many many times.   It is difficult to follow its trail – 100, One Hundred, Imagine at different locations.   Is this graft? fraud?  Imagine still has a failing charter campus opened? What happened to the two additional campuses?  $300,000 disappeared with change in names and admin?   This is what lack of accountability and transparency does. 
What happened to the Montessori in Carson?   I believe it is still there – complaining about cash.  These charters worry me because they never have a testing year so zero data and zero accountability. This is what lack of accountability and transparency does.   They received funding but complain about no money and blame Vegas.  They may try to get the Silver State/Argent Building.   They do not serve the poor. 
Silver State Charter School changed its name to Argent and lost almost all its students.  Sounds like the receiver had concerns because no one attended the “distance” low performer school.  No one ever graduated.   As in zero.   Perhaps Joshua Kern knows where the $440,000 went?   No one graduated.  This is the first charter I have seen “closed” by the charter authority.  I do not think it had any students left and that is what actually closed it. 
School of the deaf went bankrupt.  Im surprised it did not go into receivership and just get more money like Quest, Silver State and others.  The Nevada Tax Payer pays millions to keep financially floundering  charters open. 
E-TECHS had a facebook and a twitter for $300,000.  This was in 2011 and they never opened?   What happened to the money? 
Gardnerville’s Sierra Crest closed in 2010.  Sounds like the local school board was not putting up with low quality.  What happened to the $172,000? 
Did Washoe Team A even exist at all?  Where did the $220,000 go?  
Nevada folks need to demand to see this money.   
If Nevada Senator Scott Hammond is hiding behind a non-profit management system – we need to know that too.    Managing 5 charters for free?  What kind of accountability and transparency is this?  
There needed to be a charter moratorium for good reason.   Rest in Power Tyrone Thompson who knew that.  Playing games like this with money when Nevada has none is crazy. 
We see you Gulenist Soner Tarim 👀 Agenda 4a.   How much money are you bringing to Nevada Strong?  Expert at getting grants and not opening?   Everyone should protest every Nevada Charter Meeting to close that Gulen Charter down.  Nevada does not need anymore scamming known bad actors. 
None of these December 2019 charter applicants should be granted anything.  These scams are too much. 
Asleep at the wheel and gone off the road and crashed into a ditch.  
This is bad. 
Angie Sullivan. 
Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Fraud, Nevada, Privatization
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