Archives for category: Failure
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Tennessee: An Educator Appraises the Candidates for Governor

By dianeravitch
October 30, 2018 //
8

Dr. Bill Smith of Johnson City, Tennessee, watched the two candidates for Governor of Tennessee debate and focus on education as key to the state’s future.

The Republican, Bill Lee, swore his allegiance to the party line and endorsed charters and vouchers. He goes full Betsy DeVos.

The Democrat, Karl Dean, pledged his devotion to “public education” and his love for charter schools, which have failed in Tennessee. Dean goes partial Betsy DeVos.

Surely both men know that the Tennessee Achievement School District spent $100 million of Race to the Top money to turn low-scoring schools over to charters, and the ASD was a colossal failure. $100 million wasted.

Why do they want more of the same?

Dr. Smith writes with more wisdom than either candidate:

It’s no secret that non-profit charter schools often divert money intended for children’s instruction to other priorities. For example, many charters compensate their “CEOs” two to three times the salaries of principals who perform the same functions in regular public schools. Vision Academy in Nashville pays its two top executives (a married couple) a combined $562,000, while reportedly charging students for textbooks. (Imagine the outcry if a local public school engaged in such financial behavior.)

The Oct. 9 debate between Lee and Dean was — like the rest of their campaign — noteworthy for its civility. They both seem to be good, decent men, and they exhibit many of the leadership qualities we should all want in our governor. Moreover, when you listen to them talk about educational reforms, their arguments seem very compelling — until you carefully consider the facts.

Lee is either delusional or disingenuous to assert that he would do nothing to diminish public education but is fully in favor of vouchers and charters. The point of offering these choices is to diminish public education, and the evidence indicates that it is working.

Further, when he says we should give students educational alternatives, identify the “best practices” to emerge from these settings, and then implement these model approaches in public schools, he is describing the central promise of the charter school movement when it first emerged in the 1990s. In the beginning, the plan was that charter schools would be relieved of regulatory oversight so that they could explore creative practices and then export their best ideas to public education. Unfortunately, that never happened.

This failure raises a fundamental question that Lee, Dean and other charter advocates do not address (in my opinion, because they can’t). If charter schools are as wonderful as they claim, why won’t they tell us what makes these schools so effective? If you knew the cure to a dreadful disease, would you keep it to yourself?

The charter folks remind me of the old snake oil salesmen who appeared unexpectedly one morning, sold their mysterious elixirs, and slipped out of town at dusk. They made incredible claims about the benefits found in those opaque bottles, but they never told anyone what the ingredients were. “Trust me,” they said. “It’ll cure whatever ails you.”

Let’s be clear. Advocates of charters and vouchers can’t tell us why these educational alternatives are better because they simply aren’t. Moreover, most of the people pushing for choice don’t want to improve public education. They want to undermine it so that they can profit from educational privatization. The only reason they want relaxed regulatory oversight is so that they can funnel as much of our tax dollars as possible into their own pockets without us noticing.

I believe that Dean is sincere about his support for public education, and I will vote for him for that reason. To his credit, he opposes all forms of choice except for non-profit charters, and I hope that he will realize one day that they too have failed to live up to expectations. He is kidding himself when he denounces the undermining effects of vouchers on public education while simultaneously advocating for charters (even in a limited capacity) and not seeing that they too draw resources away from public schools.

Democrats who still think there’s a place for charter schools need to reconsider that position. If there was ever a useful role for charters in our educational system, it has long since been high-jacked and corrupted beyond redemption. Charters are simply one more weapon for market fundamentalists to employ in their effort to privatize public education.

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

Jan Resseger: The Good News About Resistance to Fake Reform

By dianeravitch
October 28, 2018 //
11

Jan Resseger sums up the many reasons to be optimistic about resistance to corporate education Reform.

Among them are the teacher walkouts this spring.

And much more.

The Reformers are no longer making grandiose claims. The evidence is in. They have no secret sauce. Just money. Lots of it.

Summary: Democracy beats billionaires.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, For-Profit, Fraud

Two NOLA Charter Schools Closed Due to Low Scores, Low Enrollment

By dianeravitch
October 28, 2018 //
8

Two New Orleans charters, both from the Algiers charter chain, are closing. Read the article to see what is happening to the students. They are moved around like pieces on a giant checker board.

A few months ago, the Education Research Alliance of Tulane University published a report about the success of the New Orleans charter model (Formula: get a natural disaster to wipe out high-poverty neighborhoods and many schools, reduce enrollment by 1/3, change the overall demographics, fire all the teachers and bring in TFA, eliminate the union, replace public schools with private charters, open selective charters for the “best” kids, segregate the poorest black kids, put the structure under an uncritical State board elected with help from out-of-State billionaires, and VOILA! A school miracle!).

But not quite.

Bruce Baker pointed out that the ERA’s glowing report about the privatization of NOLA ignored the significant addition of new funding and the reduction of concentrated poverty after Hurricane Katrina, which together might have accounted for any gains.

Mercedes Schneider analyzed the NOLA data and found that New Orleans has the state’s highest performing schools (selective admissions) and the state’s lowest performing schools. Forty percent (40%) of the charters in the New Orleans district are failing schools, rated as D or F by the state. This latter group enrolls high numbers of poor and black students.

Not a model for the nation, if you care about equity.

According to the data in Mercedes Schneider’s report, the two schools that are closing have 670 students. Only two are white. More than 95% of the students in these schools are poor.

From the article about the closure of the two charters:

Two charter schools located in Algiers are set to close next June after failing to meet the standards required for charter renewal. The Algiers Charter Schools Association announced it will close William J. Fischer Accelerated Academy and McDonogh No. 32 Literacy Charter School in 2019.

In addition, McDonogh No. 32 students will relocate to the Fischer campus on Wednesday (Oct. 24) when the Algiers Charter network returns from fall break. School leaders decided to house both schools in the campus at 1801 L.B. Landry Avenue for the remainder of the school year because of low enrollment at both schools.

In an Oct. 5 letter to parents, Algiers Charter Interim CEO Stuart Gay said the changes are part of an effort “to stabilize our classrooms through the 2018-2019 school year and to ensure the best academic year possible for our students.”

Though the two schools will be under the same roof, students will keep their respective uniforms and the schools will operate individually, each with their own principals, according to relocation details provided by the charter network on its website. McDonogh No. 32 Pre-K, kindergarten and 1st grade classrooms will be located on the first floor of the Fischer building. All other McDonogh classrooms will be located on the second floor.

Additionally, all McDonogh No. 32 students who are currently in 8th grade will receive a McDonogh diploma. Students grades K-7 from McDonogh No. 32 and Fischer will receive “closing school priority” in OneApp, the city’s centralized enrollment system, for next school year. That means Fischer and McDonogh No. 32 students will be first in line when schools start filling seats for the 2019-20 school year, even ahead of other priority students like those with siblings already enrolled or who live close to a school. That priority is only given to students exiting closing schools.

The academy was one of four schools in the city that serves students expelled from other schools.

Tammi Griffin-Major, Algiers Charter’s chief of staff, declined to comment Tuesday morning on the changes and planned closures.

Financial audits from the Louisiana Legislative Auditor’s office show Algiers Charter Schools Association had $45.3 million in revenue last year. Its expenses were more than $44.9 million. The network currently operates four schools — Fischer, McDonogh No. 32, Martin Behrman Charter School and L.B Landry-O.P. Walker College and Career Preparatory High School.

Miracle? Not for these children.

Categories Charter Schools, Failure, New Orleans

Jan Resseger: An Important Book About the Tragic Costs of Mass School Closings in Chicago

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2018 //
14

Jan Resseger writes here about an important new book by sociologist Eve Ewing about the mass closure of 50 public schools in Chicago. This was Rahm Emanuel’s worst legacy. It is a stain on his reputation, unmatched in American history. No district or city or state ever closed 50 schools in one day. Emanuel believes, like Arne Duncan, that schools “fail,” when in fact it is society that fails when children come to school hungry and in need of smaller classes, medical care, and food.

She writes:

Eve Ewing’s new book, Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side, explores the blindness, deafness, and heartlessness of technocratic, “portfolio school reform”* as it played out in 50 school closings in Chicago at the end of the school year in 2013. After months of hearings, the Chicago Public Schools didn’t even send formal letters to the teachers, parents and students in the schools finally chosen for closure. People learned which schools had finally been shut down when the list was announced on television.

Eve Ewing, a professor in the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration and a former teacher in one of the closed schools, brings her training as a sociologist to explore this question: “But why do people care about these failing schools?” (p. 13) In four separate chapters, Ewing examines the question from different perspectives: (1) the meaning for the community of the closure of Dyett High School and the hunger strike that reopened the school; (2) the history of segregation in Chicago as part of the Great Migration, followed by the intensification of segregation in thousands of public housing units built and later demolished in the Bronzeville neighborhood; (3) the narratives of community members, teachers, parents and students about the meaning of their now-closed schools in contrast to the narrative of the portfolio school planners at Chicago Public Schools; and (4) the mourning that follows when important community institutions are destroyed.

We hear an English teacher describing the now-closed school where she had taught: “I never considered us as a failing school or failing teachers or failing students. I felt like pretty much everyone in that building was working really hard for those kids…. Trying to push them forward as far as they could go.” (p. 135)

And we hear Rayven Patrick, an eighth grader speaking about the importance of Mayo elementary school at the public hearing which preceded the school’s closure: “Most of my family have went to Mayo. My grandma attended. My mother, my aunt. I came from a big family. The Patricks are known in Mayo. Like, we have been going there for so long. Over the years I have watched lots of students graduate, and they were able to come back to their teachers and tell them how high school has been going. Most of them are in college now, and I see them come to the few teachers that are left at Mayo and tell them of their experience of college and high school. This year I will graduate. And most of the students at Mayo… They’re family to me. Little sisters and little brothers. I walk through the hallway, and every kid knows who I am. I’m able to speak to them, and I honestly, I wanna be able to watch them graduate.” (pp. 108-109)

Ewing also shares the justification for the 50 school closures by Barbara Byrd-Bennett, then Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s appointed school district CEO: “But for too long, children in certain parts of our city have been cheated out of the resources they need to succeed in the classroom because they are trapped in underutilized schools. These underutilized schools are also under-resourced.” (p. 4)

Throughout the book, teachers, students, parents, and grandparents point out the irony that Byrd-Bennett has criticized their now-closed school for being under-resourced. She is herself the person with enough power to have changed the funding formula that left some schools with ever-diminishing resources. Community members also complain again and again that at the same time neighborhood public schools are being shut down, the school district has been encouraging rapid growth in the number of charter schools.

Give credit (blame) where it is due: The Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington posited that the “portfolio model” would lead to success and efficiency. What they never considered was the consequences of their cold logic: lives and communities disrupted and damaged; grief; the harm to students and teachers caused by constant churn.

But no problem for CRPE: it will continue to be funded by the usual sources to damage more lives.

Categories Accountability, Chicago, Closing schools, Emanuel, Rahm, Failure

Peter Greene: Even Reformers Have Noticed the Failure of Standardized Testing

By dianeravitch
October 16, 2018 //
23

Peter Greene has noticed that some of the leading reformers acknowledge disillusionment with the “Big Standardized Test.”

And yet we plod along, one foot in front of another, obeying a law that requires teachers to do what they know is wrong.

He cautions:

There is one critical lesson that ed reform testing apostates should keep in mind. The idea that the Big Standardized Test does not measure what it claims to measure, the idea that it actually does damage to schools, the idea that it simply isn’t what it claims to be– while these ideas are presented as new notions for ed reformers, classroom teachers have been raising these concerns for about 20 years.

Teachers have said, repeatedly, that the tests don’t measure what they claim to measure, and that the educational process in schools is being narrowed and weakened in order to focus on testing. Teachers have said, repeatedly, that the Big Standardized Tests are a waste of time and money and not helping students get an education. Teachers have been saying it over and over and over again. In return teachers have been told, “You are just afraid of accountability” and “These tests will finally keep you honest.”

After 20 years, folks are starting to figure out that teachers were actually correct. The Big Standardized Test is not helping, not working, and not measuring what it claims to measure. Teachers should probably not hold their collective breath waiting for an apology, though it is the generation of students subjected to test-centered schooling that deserve an apology. In the meantime, if ed reform thought leader policy wonk mavens learn one thing, let it be this– the next time you propose an Awesome idea for fixing schools and a whole bunch of professional educators tell you why your idea is not great, listen to them.

Reformers listen to teachers? What an idea! Don’t hold your breath.

Categories Accountability, Failure, Testing

Democratic Senators Call for Investigation of Online Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2018 //
48

You read that right. Democratic senators want an investigation of virtual charter schools, the kind that I have posted about here about 100 times. They read a report about how shoddy they are, written by the Center for American Progress. That shocked them. They say there is almost no research about these profiteering virtual charter schools that Betsy DeVos and ALEC adore. Apparently, the only research they ever hear about is whatever is written by the Center for American Progress, which loves charters but not vouchers.

Two Democratic senators asked Wednesday for the Government Accountability Office to launch an investigation into the practices and policies of virtual charter schools. The request comes on the same day the Center for American Progress released a report outlining stark academic shortcomings at these schools and a disproportionate focus on profit over quality.

The virtual charter schools have come under scrutiny in states including California and Ohio. But now Democratic Sens. Patty Murray (Wash.) and Sherrod Brown (Ohio) are calling for a more comprehensive look at how these schools work in the 27 states that house them. About 300,000 students attend these online public schools of choice. The enrollment has been steadily increasing over the years.

“There is almost no research on whether virtual charter schools meet student needs, especially for students who require specific accommodations, including English learners and students with disabilities,” says the letter from the senators.

Of course, they are wrong. There has been a great deal of research about the failure of virtual charter schools, much of it by Gary Miron of the Western Michigan University, published by the National Education Policy Center. Here is the latest.

The charter-friendly CREDO at the Hoover Institution at Stanford studied online charter schools in 2015 and determined that their students typically lost a full year of learning in math, and 72 days in reading. (p. 23). That’s like not going to school at all.

The first set of analyses examines the academic growth of online charter students compared to the matched VCRs made up of students who attended brick-and-mortar district-run schools. These schools are typically referred to as traditional public schools (TPS). Compared to their VCRs in the TPS, online charter students have much weaker growth overall. Across all tested students in online charters, the typical academic gains for math are -0.25 standard deviations (equivalent to 180 fewer days of learning) and -0.10 (equivalent to 72 fewer days) for reading (see Figure 3). This means that compared to their twin attending TPS, the sizes of the coefficients leave little doubt attending an online charter school leads to lessened academic growth for the average student.

In addition to research studies documenting the virtual charter sham, there have been many excellent pieces of investigative journalism, like Jesse Calefati’s series on K12, Inc. in California.

And I should mention that I devoted a chapter to virtual charter scams in my 2013 book Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools.

What kind of education staff do these senators have? Why is CAP their only source of information?

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

New York: Common Core Produces Massive Failure in Writing

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2018 //
146

Remember all the bold promises about Common Core? Remember the claims that it would increase achievement for all students and close the achievement gap? That’s what David Coleman (architect of the Common Core and now president of the College Board, maker of the SAT) claimed, along with a plethora of Gates-funded advocates for Common Core.

Never happened. National NAEP scores flatlined, and scores for the poorest kids dropped.

Here is the latest from New York, which embraced the Common Core wholeheartedly.

Since the introduction of the Common Core, the proportion of students in New York who scored zero on the state writing tests has doubled. In addition, the achievement gap has grown.


An alarming number of NYC students have scored three or more “zeroes” for their writing answers on the statewide English exams, a new study reveals.

On the English Language Arts exams between 2013 and 2016, in addition to multiple-choice questions, students had to read nine or 10 short stories or texts, then write responses aimed at showing their ability to think critically and cite evidence to support their answers.

A score of zero (out of 2 to 4 possible points per question) means a student wrote something “totally inaccurate,” “unintelligible,” or “indecipherable.”

“Kids were stupified by these questions,” Fred Smith, a former test analyst for the city Department of Education, told The Post.

Smith and Robin Jacobowitz, the director of educational projects at the Benjamin Center, a research unit of SUNY New Paltz, were forced to use the Freedom of Information Law to obtain the data for their report titled, “Tests are Turning our Children into Zeroes: A Focus on Failing.”

Of about 78,000 NYC third-graders, they found the number who scored zeroes on three or more written answers doubled from 10,696 (14 percent) in 2012 to 21,464 (28 percent) in 2013, when the state tests were redesigned to fit the tougher Common Core standards.

But in the next three years, city third-graders — who were taught nothing but Common Core curriculum since kindergarten — still racked up zeroes at the same high rate, the study found.

The percentage with three or more zeroes on the ELA exam was still 28 percent in 2014, 29 percent in 2015, and 27 percent in 2016, the last year data was available.
That year, the state eliminated time limits, but the effect on zeroes was slight.

“We can’t say this is just kids getting used to the Common Core curriculum. This is all they’ve ever known,” Jacobowitz said. “It did not get better over time.”

What’s worse, the racial achievement gap widened. In 2013, the number of black kids scoring three or more zeroes was 10 percent higher than white kids. In 2016, the gap grew to 18 percent. The white/Hispanic gap grew from 11 percent to 20….

State officials denied the exams — which cost taxpayers $32 million in a five-year contract with testing vendor Pearson — were poorly designed.

“In general, zeroes would not imply a flaw in the test; rather, it would demonstrate students struggled to master the content being assessed,” a spokesperson said.

Another vendor, Questar, produced the exams for 2017 and 2018, given last spring, under a new, five-year $44.7 million contract.

The state has so far withheld data showing how many kids got zeroes on those test

Time for New York State to release the data for 2017 and 2018.

Be sure to read the study by Fred Smith and Robin Jacobowitz.

Categories Common Core, Failure, New York

Georgia: Iconic Charter School Is Closing Its Doors

By dianeravitch
September 30, 2018 //
7

Ivy Prep Gwinnett Charter School is not reopening. It was once held up as an example by Georgia Governor Nathan Deal as proof of the charter school success story. Charters come and go like day lilies.

“Ivy Preparatory Academy, a once-esteemed Gwinnett County charter school, will not reopen next year, and signs point to permanent closure.

“In a unanimous vote on August 16, 2018, the school board reluctantly decided to end all planning efforts to reopen,” says a statement from a spokesman.

“The decision was reached after “an exhaustive” review of the financial situation that led the charter school’s board to conclude that reopening next year, as a former director and the board had previously told parents would happen, is not “a viable option.”

“The decision marked a sharp turnaround from early in the decade, when the all-girl school became a symbol of the charter school movement. Girls, in their iconic green blazers, filled the halls of the state Capitol to lobby lawmakers.

“In 2012, Gov. Nathan Deal used the school in his argument for passage of a constitutional amendment for charter schools, writing in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that it was “a great example” of superior performance relative to traditional public schools.

“Voters were convinced, and that November they changed the constitution to create the State Charter Schools Commission.

“For a time, the future looked bright, as Ivy Prep expanded to DeKalb County, opening a second campus. Then, last year, the AJC revealed problems at the Gwinnett campus, where the academics were slipping, enrollment was plummeting and costs were outpacing revenue.”

The students were abandoned and left to find another choice.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Georgia, Privatization

Chalkbeat in Tennessee Admits Failure of the Achievement School District, But State Sees a Silver Lining

By dianeravitch
September 27, 2018 //
6

You read it here first, straight from Gary Rubinstein’s superb blog (or, if you subscribe to Gary’s blog, you read it there first. The much-hyped Achievement School District in Tennessee is a flop. The same ASD that several red states have copied, not waiting for evidence or results.

Now Chalkbeat’s Tennessee outpost covers the story, and it isn’t pretty.

“Most of the schools that were taken over by Tennessee’s turnaround district remain on the state’s priority list six years after the intervention efforts began.

Four of the six original Memphis schools that were taken over by the state in 2012 are on the newest priority list released last week. And more than a dozen schools that were added to the district later also remain on the list.

Four of six original ASD schools remain on list…

Brick Church College Prep

Corning Achievement

Frayser Achievement

Westside Achievement

For years, the district has fallen short of its ambitious promise to dramatically raise test scores at the schools by handing them over to charter operators — a goal that the district’s founder later acknowledged was too lofty. And researchers with the Tennessee Education Research Alliance recently concluded that schools in the state district are doing no better than other low-performing schools that received no state help…

Of the 34 schools that have ever been part of the Achievement School District, 17 are on the new priority list, and four have closed. Thirteen schools are not on the new list.

In contrast, Memphis’ Innovation Zone, an improvement initiative from the local district, saw more of its schools move upward: 16 out of 25 schools absorbed into the iZone improved enough to exit the list.

One thing is clear: the charter schools that took over the low-performing schools did not have a secret sauce.

For some unknown reason, the state sees a silver lining in this failed effort to vault the lowest-performing schools into the top of the state’s rankings.

“Still, the state says the Achievement School District has had a positive influence that might not be reflected in its own school’s scores. Education Commissioner Candice McQueen recently praised Shelby County Schools’ progress, giving partial credit to the state’s own Achievement School District for creating a sense of urgency in Memphis.”

The schools may have failed to keep their promise but they created “a sense of urgency” in Memphis, where most are located.

Yes, there must be a sense of angst, like, what do we do now that the magic bullet failed?

Is reality replacing magical thinking?

The article links to one posted by Chalkbeat in August which did a “deep dive” into the dismal results of the $100 Million spent on the ASD.

“Six years after the state took over six of Tennessee’s lowest-performing schools, all of those schools continue to struggle, new state test results show…

“Of the schools in the original state-run district, four of the six had fewer than 10 percent of students testing at or above grade level in math or English during the 2017-2018 academic year, according to TNReady test results released last week. Meanwhile, Cornerstone Prep Lester Elementary School in Memphis performed better than its counterparts with 11.5 percent of students at grade level in English and 20 percent of students at grade level in math. Frayser Achievement Elementary had 12 percent of students at grade level in English, but just 9 percent at grade level in math.

“As a point of comparison, statewide averages for grades 3-8 had 33.9 percent of Tennessee students at grade level in English and 37.3 percent at grade level in math.”

The ASD was based on the Recovery School District in New Orleans. The research czar in New Orleans, Douglas Harris of Tulane, says that the Tennessee ASD should have been more aggressive in turning over low-performing charters to other charter operators. That would be almost every school in the ASD. Surely there mus5 be charter operators who have cracked the code of raising test scores. But then, Memphis didn’t have a natural disaster to drive out a substantial portion of its poorest families.

The bottom line in Tennessee is that none of the ASD charters was catapulted from the bottom 5% to the Top 25%. None even cracked the top 90%.

Time for fresh thinking?

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

Gary Rubinstein: CONFIRMED! The Complete and Total Failure of the Tennessee Achievement School District at a Cost of $100 Million

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2018 //
21

Gary Rubinstein reports that the latest Tennessee school rankings were just released. Now we know. The Tennessee Achievement School District was a complete and total failure. $100 million down the drain, which came from Race to the Top funding. The same money might have been used to reduce class sizes in these schools. Instead, it was used to induce charter operators to come to Tennessee and work their magic. It failed.

Would someone tell Bill Gates, John Arnold, Reed Hastings, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, and the other billionaires who are still spreading the phony claim of charter miracles?

Spread the word to states like Nevada, Georgia, and North Carolina, which created their own “achievement school districts” based on the Tennessee model.

Seven years ago, as part of Tennessee’s Race To The Top plan, they launched The Achievement School District (ASD). With a price tag of over $100 million, their mission was to take schools that were in the bottom 5% of schools and, within five years, raise them into the top 25%.

They started with six schools and three years into the experiment, Chris Barbic, the superintendent of the ASD had a ‘mission accomplished’ moment where he declared in an interview that three of those six schools were on track to meet that goal.

But a year later, the gains that led to that prediction had disappeared and it wasn’t looking good for any of those six schools. By the time the five year mark had been reached, in the Fall of 2016, Chris Barbic had already resigned and taken a job with the John Arnold Foundation.

The thing about 2016, though, is that whether or not the ASD schools met the lofty goal could not be determined, officially. Tennessee releases their official ‘priority’ list of the bottom 5% schools every three years. And, conveniently enough, the last one was in 2015. So even though it was clear in 2016 that the original 6 ASD schools would not be in the top 25%, an even more important question — how many of those schools remained in the bottom 5%? — would not be known officially for two more years, in the Fall of 2018.

A few days ago, Tennessee finally released the long-awaited 2018 priority schools list, and for the ASD, the results were decisive and devastating.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Privatization, Race to the Top, Tennessee
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »