Archives for category: Failure
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Laura Chapman: A Letter to Senator Sherrod Brown

By dianeravitch
July 30, 2019 //
16

This is a model of a letter to a Senator or Member of Congress. It was written by Laura Chapman of Cincinnati to one of her Senators. It is clear and based on evidence.

Dear Senator Brown,

I recently received an email from you, intended as a response to my prior effort to understand your position on federal funding for charter schools and so-called “choice” programs beloved by Secretary DeVos.

You gave an uninformed response to my concerns about federal money pouring into the coffers of the charter school industry, money often added to by state funds and non-trival sums in private dollars.

Please pay attention. More than one third of federally funded charter schools, funded at $1.billion, never opened or closed soon after opening.

You should be investigating why Betsy Devos is treating our tax dollars as a personal slush fund for corporate charter schools while ignoring well documented evidence of waste, fraud, and abuse and cronyism in how these funds are used.

Charter school advocates posture about “high-quality schools” just like you do. In fact, many charter schools are terrible. Consider these facts.

Ohio 2018 report cards for 257 charter schools.

__235 charter schools received a grade of D or F (not exactly high quality).
__15 charter schools earned a C, merely average (not exactly high quality).
__ 4 charter schools had a grade of B
__ 3 charter schools had a grade of A.

Most federal funds are flowing to corporate chains with off-the-shelf franchise plans, hostility to collective bargaining, and an aversion to public schools with democratically elected school boards.

Charter schools claim to be public until they are sued in court. They are routinely draining money from local public schools while claiming to be underfunded.

Most charter schools do not need federal funds. They are being supported by billionaires and many Republicans who want to privatize public institutions, public services, public lands and natural resources.

Charter schools are not lacking in funds and should not be given more from the federal budget.

Please read this report before you respond. The three-page Executive Summary is a must read. https://www.scribd.com/document/403089110/Asleep-at-the-Wheel-final-Online-Version

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Ohio, U.S. Department of Education

Peter Greene: Reformers Try to Rehabilitate Tarnished Reputation of Virtual Charters

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2019 //
11

 

Now here is a nasty job, but someone has to do it (if the price is right.) Even “reformers” agree that virtual charters are a disaster, a sector with horrible results that is populated by entrepreneurs and grifters. 

Peter Greene reviews an effort by “reformers” to salvage the rightly blemished record of this industry of scammers. 

Can it be done? Not really. 

First, he examines the connections of the writers of this report. Gold-plated reformers, for sure. Then he shows that their “insights” are either old hat, commonplace, or silly. 

The report was written by Public Impact, whose staff has few actual educators. 

Like most such groups, Public Impact likes to crank out “reports” that serve as slickly packaged advocacy for one reform thing or another. Two of their folk have just whipped together such a report for Bluum. Sigh. Yes, I know, but it’s important to mark all the wheels within wheels if for no other reason than A) it’s important to grasp just how many people are employed in the modern reformster biz and B) later, when these groups and people turn up again, you want to remember what they’ve been up to before.

What is Bluum? 

So Bluum. This Idaho-based is a “non-profit organization committed to ensuring Idaho’s children reach their fullest potential by cultivating great leaders and innovative schools.” Its 2016 990 form lists that mission, though it includes some more specific work. “Bluum assists the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Family Foundation determine where to make education investments that will result in the growth of high performing seats in Idaho.” (I will never not find the image of a high-performing seat” not funny.)Then they monitor the results. The Albertsons are Idaho grocery millionaires with an interest in education causes.

Blum’s CEO is Terry Ryan, who previously worked for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in Ohio.

Bluum partners with Teach for America, NWEA. National School Choice Week, the PIE Network, and Education Cities, to name a few. And they are the project lead on the consortium that landed a big, juicy federal CSP grant to expand charters (that’s the program that turns out to have wasted at least a billion dollars).

Just so we’re clear– this report did not come from a place of unbiased inquiry. It came from a place of committed marketing.

Of “reform-style” mushrooms, the supply is endless, and the money is infinite. The results are consistently negative. Yet they keep trying.

The Albertson Foundation in Idaho is a rightwing foundation that shares the Betsy DeVos agenda. 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, For-Profit, Virtual Charter Schools

Mercedes Schneider:Corey Booker’s Brother Was Surprised When Tennessee Expected His Charters to be Accountable

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2019 //
15

 

Mercedes Schneider wrote a post about Cory Booker’s brother, Cary, who opened two charter schools in Tennessee with an ally. His application had lofty goals. He pledged that 95% of his students would score proficient on state tests. He and his partner were astonished when the state took their promise seriously. Apparently they were just engaging in marketing by making a promise they had no intention of fulfilling.

Their charters were closed.

But no worry. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy creates a sinecure for Cary Booker, again in education. The moral of the story: Deformers fail upwards.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Memphis, New Jersey, Privatization, Tennessee

G.F. Brandenburg on the Strange Case of the D.C. Editorialist Who Still Loves Michelle Rhee

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2019 //
21

 

G.F. Brandenburg cannot understand the Washington Post editorial writer Jo-Anne Armao. When Michelle Rhee started her job as chancellor of the D.C. schools in 2007, Armao interviewed her and decided that she was the greatest educator ever. Nothing that has happened in the past dozen years has changed her views. To this day, she still writes lovingly, respectfully about the Miracle that was Michelle Rhee. All her initiatives have failed. A huge cheating scandal was covered up and forgotten. Charter scandals have come and gone. A high school boasted of its 100% graduation rate, but it was a fake.

No matter. The Washington Post editorial board has Rhee’s back, almost a decade after she left.

For a fun trip down memory lane, read the comments on the John Merrow post from 2013 that is included.

Categories Accountability, Cheating, Corporate Reform, Corruption, Disruption, District of Columbia, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Fraud, Rhee, Michelle

Ex-Governor Rick Snyder Will Not Teach at Harvard, as Backlash Grows Against Him

By dianeravitch
July 3, 2019 //
47

 

Michigan Ex-Governor Rick Snyder will not teach at Harvard,The outcry over Snyder’s role in the Flint water crisis made his position at Harvard untenable.

Former Gov. Rick Snyder has pulled out of a prestigious fellowship at Harvard University after the Ivy League school faced immense criticism for the governor’s track record in the Flint water crisis.

Snyder announced midday Wednesday his decision to withdraw from a senior research fellow position at Harvard Kennedy School’s Taubman Center for State and Local Government.

“It would have been exciting to share my experiences, both positive and negative,” Snyder wrote on Twitter. “Our current political environment and its lack of civility makes this too disruptive.”

Harvard’s appointment of the former two-term Republican governor and businessman sparked backlash on social media and reportedly caused friction this week on the university’s Cambridge, Mass., campus.

Snyder has shouldered public blame for the Flint water crisis after his emergency managers switched the city’s water source in April 2014 to Flint River water without corrosion control chemicals to prevent toxic lead from leaching into the city’s drinking water supply.

The Snyder administration’s Department of Environmental Quality oversaw Flint’s switch from Detroit’s Lake Huron water to the Flint River water using a water treatment plant in Flint that hadn’t been used full-time since the 1960s.

Douglas Elmendorf, dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School, said students would have learned from questioning Snyder over Flint and other issues, but “we and he now believe that having him on campus would not enhance education here in the ways we intended.”

Snyder’s appointment began June 1 and was to include teaching, studying and writing about issues affecting state and local government in the country.

In a statement issued last Friday, the head of the Taubman Center said the university welcomed Snyder’s “significant expertise in management, public policy and promoting civility.”

He could have lectured on his decision to poison the people of Flint to save money. Or he might have taught about the failure of his “Educational Achievement Authority.” Or he might have reviewed how the expansion of charters contributed to the collapse of Michigan’s standing on NAEP.

But to do any of that requires reflection and critical thinking, qualities Snyder never exhibited.

The ethical standards at the Taubman Center may be flexible, however. It was established with funding by businessman A. Alfred Taubman, who was convicted in a criminal price-fixing scheme that involved two prominent auction houses. He served several months in prison. Taubman, like Snyder, was born in Michigan.

Categories Education Reform, Failure

Jan Resseger: Florida’s Education Disaster

By dianeravitch
June 29, 2019 //
10

 

In this post, Jan Resseger surveys the war against public schools in Florida.

Sue Legg summarized the abject failure of Jeb Bush’s A+ Plan here.

The drive to privatize public schools was masterminded by Jeb Bush, with the help of Betsy DeVos, a compliant Republican Legislature (including some who own or operate charter schools), and a zest to give public money to entrepreneurs and grifters.

Asshe points out, recent legislation requires school districts to share their tax levies with charter schools over which they have no control.

Privatization and school choice are rooted in the desire for profit and segregation.

Despite Jeb Bush’s propaganda campaign, his A+ Plan deserves an F-.

Bush, that educational genius, invented the idea of labeling schools with a single letter.

Floridians now treat school grades as normal, but only 15 states require them, mostly low-performing. states. 

I have said it before and I was say it again: School grades are stupid. They are idiotic. Under Bloomberg as mayor, NYC had school grades for a few years. They were meaningless. The public school in my Brooklyn neighborhood was rated A one year; the Mayor and Joel Klein made a ceremonial visit to the school to congratulate the principal and staff. The next year it got a grade of F. Nothing had changed. Same principal, same staff.

If your child came home with a report card that had only one letter, you would be incensed. Why then should anyone accept a single letter grade for an institution with hundreds of staff and students and multiple programs?

School grades deserve an F. A truly dumb idea. No state should use them.

Education in Florida is a mess that is designed to benefit privateers and harm public schools.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Florida, For-Profit, Privatization

Peter Greene: Why Does Anyone Listen to Jeb Bush’s Failed Ideas?

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2019 //
18

 

Peter Greene read an unusually annoying article in the Detroit News that showed just out of touch the authors are.

Michigan is a state that went overboard for school choice, thanks to former Governor John Engler and the billionaire DeVos family.

Michigan has dropped down to the bottom of NAEP, as scores have collapsed for every group.

Jeb Bush arrives to tell Michigan what they need to do is double down on their failed strategies. More choice. More testing. More accountability. More threats. More punishments.

Bush claimed that these strategies worked in Florida but they didn’t.As Greene notes, fourth grade score went up only because the state holds back third graders who don’t pass the third grade reading test. By eighth grade, students in Florida are at the national average.

Who aspires to be average?

Things are so bad in Michigan that average looks good. It is not.

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, Florida, Fraud, Michigan, Privatization, School Choice, Testing

Utah Picks a Trouble-Plagued Testing Company to Operate State Tests for $44 Million

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2019 //
39

Utah state education officials knew that Questar had a problem-filled record, but they picked it anyway and gave it a contract for $44 million.

From the Salt Lake City Tribune:

In other states, the year-end tests were marked by glitches and cyberattacks and hourlong delays. One school district threw out its results because the software was so unreliable. In another, all of the students had to start over when the programming shut down and didn’t save their responses.

Sensitive student data was stolen in New York and Mississippi. More than 1,400 students took the wrong test in Tennessee.

But even after those issues arose — and despite clearly knowing about them — Utah signed a $44 million contract with that same testing company last spring to develop the state’s standardized exams, now called RISE. And the rollout hasn’t gone well.

As students here have tried to submit their tests, their computer screens have frozen and some haven’t been able to recover their work.

“This is clearly problematic,” said Darin Nielsen, the state’s assistant superintendent of student learning. “It hasn’t performed like we had hoped or expected. There are frustrations for many people across the state.”

The outages in Utah have delayed more than 18,000 public school students in completing their assessments this April and May. For one day, no one was able to take a science exam. On at least four others, testing was stopped entirely for some school districts.

The state has had to expand the testing window into June. Now, it’s questioning whether the scores it gets back will even be valid enough to use.

Will students be denied their high school diploma based on this invalid test? Will schools be closed or teachers fired?

Stupid is as stupid does.

Why doesn’t Utah trust its teachers to write their own tests? They know what they taught, they know their students. Let them decide.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Failure, Testing, Utah

Closing! Delaware Charter that Won $10 Million XQ Award

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2019 //
46

 

Kevin Ohlandt has the story: The Design Thinking Academy, a charter school that won Laurene Powell Jobs’ XQ competition to “reinvent” the high school, is closing.  

Ohlandt has documents demonstrating that the school was done in by adult mismanagement and greed.

The school received a five-year grant of $10 million in 2016. It was supposed to be a “school of the future,” but it experienced high teacher turnover, administrative churn, and consequently.  declining enrollments. 

One parent said she started “having doubts about the school earlier in the year, when she noticed mass teacher turnover.

“When you start seeing a lot of people leaving all at once, you know what’s happening,” she said. “At the end of the day, it’s a business.”

As Ohlandt shows, the problems of the school were even more serious than portrayed.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Innovation, Privatization

Jack Schneider: Why Are Americans Turning Against Charter Schools?

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2019 //
22

 

Jack Schneider, a historian of education who often collaborates with Jennifer Berkshire, analyzes the fading allure of charter schools. After years of claims that they would “save” public schools and poor children, the public has given up on them. Why? They have not delivered, and the public gets it.

For most of the past thirty years, charters seemed unstoppable, especially because their expansion was backed by billions from people like the Waltons, Gates, and Broad, as well as the federal government. But they have not kept their promises.

Today, however, the grand promises of the charter movement remain unfulfilled, and so the costs of charters are being evaluated in a new light.

After three decades, charters enroll six percent of students. Despite bold predictions by their advocates that this number will grow fivefold, charters are increasingly in disrepute.

First, the promise of innovation was not met. Iron discipline is not exactly innovative.

Second, the promise that charters would be significantly better than public schools did not happen. In large part, that is because the introduction of charters simply creates an opportunity for choice; it does not ensure the quality of schools. Rigorous research, from groups like Mathematica Policy Research and Stanford University, has found that average charter performance is roughly equivalent to that of traditional public schools. A recent study in Ohio, for instance, concluded that some of the state’s charters perform worse than the state’s public schools, some perform better, and roughly half do not significantly differ.

Finally, charters have not produced the systemic improvement promised by their boosters.

Competition did not lift all boats. In fact, competition has weakened the public schools that enroll most students at the same time that charters do not necessarily provide a better alternative.

Schneider does not mention one other important reason for the diminishing reputation of charters: scandals, frauds, embezzlement, and other scams that appear daily in local and state media. A significant number of charters are launched and operated by non-educators and by entrepreneurs, which amplifies the reasons for charter instability and failure.

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Competition, Corruption, Education Industry, Failure, For-Profit, Fraud, Innovation, Privatization, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes
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