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John Thompson: Goliath, King of the Zombies

By dianeravitch
November 21, 2018 //
18

John Thompson here writes about his reaction to the annual conference of the Network for Public Education, where the implicit theme was that David is beating Goliath, but Goliath just keeps stumbling forward, crushing public schools and advancing privatization, with no evidence of success. I argued, in the opening address of the conference, that the Reformers are akin to Goliath, and that Goliath has failed and failed again but is so powerful that he continues to wreak destruction on communities. He is among the Walking Dead. He is, in fact, a zombie.

Thompson was a teacher in Oklahoma; he recently retired. He lives in the belly of the beast, a state where Goliathians control the legislature and the governorship. At least they don’t pretend to be “progressives.” They are DeVos-Trump extremists, with links to ALEC and the Koch brothers.

Thompson admits that he was slow in realizing that the Reformers are intent on undermining public schools and that they were acting in concert. But he is convinced now, not only that they are doing so, but that their promises have not been kept and that, in fact, they have failed wherever they set their sights.

He ends with this:

Knowing that Indianapolis is at the heart of the dying, but still dangerous corporate reform movement, I expected that Chalkbeat would choose its words carefully and make sure that its reporting didn’t threaten its donations from Goliath. Chalkbeat Indianapolis didn’t cover the NPE conference but Matt Barnum of Chalkbeat New York has been covering Indiana’s Mind Trust and its successor, the City Fund. (Chalkbeat Indiana has since linked to WFYI Indianapolis’s report on one of the city’s 20 “innovation schools” which is receiving $1.3 million in management fees.)

This leads to the biggest question that I brought to the NPE. We Oklahomans have failed to communicate with our state’s edu-philanthropists on how their science-based, holistic early education and trauma-informed instruction programs and the Indianapolis Goliath are inherently incompatible. We know that the City Fund seems to have its eye on Deborah Gist’s Tulsa Public schools. We could use some help from NPE conference participants in explaining to Tulsa philanthropists why their “portfolio model” is likely to undermine their contributions to high quality pre-k, just like it did in New Orleans.

As a lobbyist for Planned Parenthood and a board member for the ACLU/OK, I developed great respect for the Kaiser and Schusterman foundations and other Tulsa philanthropists. I still struggle to understand how those leaders could not see how their humane, evidence-based programs are threatened by Goliath’s data-driven, reward and punish corporate reforms. But one of the first people I saw in Indianapolis was Tom Ultican, and he gave me information on the $200,000 Schusterman donated to California privatizers such as Antonio Villaraigosa and Marshall Tuck. If nothing else, I would like to explain to the philanthropists why educators can’t lower our guard and stop defending ourselves against their scorched earth tactics. I’d appreciate any help the NPE can provide in explaining why we will fight Goliath to the end.

Imagine that. Chalkbeat has an outpost in Indianapolis, but did not think it was worth its time to send a reporter to cover a conference of 500 educators from across the country that took place in Indianapolis! Is that media bias? Would their funders (Walton, Gates, etc.) have objected if they sent a reporter to write about a major event in their city?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Failure, Indianapolis, Lies, Privatization

Angie Sullivan: Stop the For-Profit Charter Scam in Nevada

By dianeravitch
November 19, 2018 //
9

Angie Sullivan teaches young children in a Title 1 school in Clark County (Las Vegas), Nevada. She writes an email blast to every legislator in the state.

Angie writes:

Folks in other states are banning for-profit charter management corporations.

With good reason.

Whole campaigns are built on banning for-profit scams in other states. We need folks in Nevada to notice this mess.

http://m.wtol.com/toledonewsnow/db_347256/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=yQmm1LBE

Attendance should match testing.

In Nevada we have for-profits corporations claiming they have thousands enrolled but only a few test?

We cannot afford to give $18 Million to a corporation if they are only providing $1 million in educational type services. Note: I did not state learning – because providing a type of service is NOT learning if students do not graduate.

Meanwhile, we elect lawmakers who sit on for-profit charter boards, manage a for-profit branch, or work at a for-profit charter. They will sit in legislative session next year and have their hands on bills to line pockets. Note: I did not say teach kids, because that is NOT the bottom line or mission of a corporation. No wonder no one graduates.

Let’s not repeat mistakes of other states which expanded charters at an alarming rate and now the tax payer suffers. Nevada has a big enough mess already.

Nevada Charters are definitely not a remedy or an example. It is a travesty that a real public school in CCSD is threatened with being turned into a charter. Scary.

It is not fiscally responsible to allow Academica, Gulen Corals, or On-lines to run rampant without the same transparency and accountability required by all public schools.

Time for a for-profit charter moratorium and to clean up this $350 million mess.

CCSD Parents need to be demanding expansion of CCSD Magnets – which are the top schools in the nation – instead of these scammers. And we need funding to maintain quality in Magnets. That is what works. People need to demand what works.

The Teacher,
Angie

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

Tom Ultican: How Betsy DeVos’s Ideology Damaged the Schools of Michigan and Destroyed the Schools of Detroit

By dianeravitch
November 18, 2018 //
43

Tom Ultican posted this research about the damage wrought by the Destroy Public Education movement on Michigan and Detroit last March. I missed it. It is still painfully current.

What is the DeVos agenda? It is an aggressive version of Christian evangelism that opposes public schools.

He writes:

The destroy public education (DPE) movement’s most egregious outcome may be in Detroit and it is being driven by a virulent Christian ideology.

In 2001, Dick and Betsy DeVos answered questions for the Gathering. Dick DeVos opined that church has retreated from its central role in communities and has been replaced by the public school. He said it is our hope “churches will get more and more active and engaged in education.” Betsy noted “half of our giving is towards education.”

Jay Michaelson writing for the Daily Beast described the Gathering:

“The Gathering is a hub of Christian Right organizing, and the people in attendance have led the campaigns to privatize public schools, redefine “religious liberty” (as in the Hobby Lobby case), fight same-sex marriage, fight evolution, and, well, you know the rest.”

“The Gathering is an annual event at which many of the wealthiest conservative to hard-right evangelical philanthropists in America—representatives of the families DeVos, Coors, Prince, Green, Maclellan, Ahmanson, Friess, plus top leaders of the National Christian Foundation—meet with evangelical innovators with fresh ideas on how to evangelize the globe. The Gathering promotes “family values” agenda: opposition to gay rights and reproductive rights, for example, and also a global vision that involves the eventual eradication of all competing belief systems that might compete with The Gathering’s hard-right version of Christianity.”

In the Gathering interview, Betsy talks about how she and Dick both come from business oriented families. From their experience, they understand how competition and choice are key drivers to improve any enterprise. She says public education needs choice and competition instead of forcing people into government run schools.

She was also asked how she felt about home schooling? She replied, “we like home schools a lot,” and humorously shared, “not sure our daughters do, they were homeschooled for three years.” Then Dick added how impressed he was with Bill Bennet’s new project, K-12. He said it wasn’t a Christian oriented on-line curriculum but it was a complete education program that could help homeschoolers.

By the 1990’s Dick and Betsy DeVos were successfully influencing Michigan education policies and using private giving to drive their agenda. Christina Rizga wrote about the DeVos’s philanthropy for Mother Jones.

“… [T]here’s the DeVoses’ long support of vouchers for private, religious schools; conservative Christian groups like the Foundation for Traditional Values, which has pushed to soften the separation of church and state; and organizations like Michigan’s Mackinac Center for Public Policy, which has championed the privatization of the education system.”

As the new century opened, the DeVos agenda was being ever more adopted in Lancing. If improving the education of children in Michigan was the goal, then the DeVos education agenda has proved to be a clear failure. On the other hand, if destroying public education to accommodate privatized Christian schools was the goal, they are still on track.

Betsy and Dick DeVos got a referendum on the ballot in Michigan in 2000, aiming to revise the state constitution to allow for vouchers, so students could use public funds to attend religious schools. Their constitutional amendment was overwhelmingly rejected by the voters. So, the DeVoses turned to charter schools as their means to promote choice.

From 2000 to 2015, Michigan’s scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress fell from 14th in the nation to 43rd.

Ultican describes what happened to Detroit. First, the state wiped out the elected board and established mayoral control. Then the state restored an elected board. Meanwhile the district’s debt kept rising as its enrollment was plummeting. Detroit was flooded with charter schools, most of which operated for profit. The district was left with “stranded costs” as students transferred from public to charter schools.

He writes: The extra-costs associated with privatizing DPS were all born by the public schools.

As charters continued to open and enrollment continued to fall, the state stepped in again:

Not acknowledging their own role in creating the financial crisis in Detroit, the state government again pushed the elected school board aside in 2009. Education policy was theoretically left under the purview of the school board but financial management would be the responsibility of a governor appointed emergency manager. This time it was a Democratic Governor, Jenifer Granholm who selected a graduate of the unaccredited Broad superintendents’ academy class of 2005, Robert Bobb, to be the manager.

Not only did Granholm select a Broad academy graduate, but Eli Broad paid part of his $280,000 salary. Sharon Higgins, who studies the Broad academy, reports that a civil rights group and a coalition of teachers who oppose charter schools questioned “whether Bobb was in conflict of interest for accepting $89,000 of his salary from a foundation that supports private and charter schools.”

Bobb made significant cuts to DPS. He closed many schools and eliminated 25% of the districts employees. He also sold several school buildings. The Detroit News reported in March 2010, “Instead of a $17 million surplus Bobb projected for this fiscal year, spending has increased so much Bobb is projecting a $98 million deficit for the budget year that ends June 30.”

Bobb blamed unforeseeable costs related to declining enrollment. Curt Guyette at the Metro-Times relates that many people blamed spending on high priced consultants and contracts. Guyette provided this example:

“Of particular note was Barbara Byrd-Bennett, hired by Bobb on a nine-month contract to be the district’s chief academic and accountability auditor. She received a salary of nearly $18,000 a month plus an armed personal driver. In addition, Byrd, a former chief executive officer of Cleveland’s public schools system, ‘brought with her at least six consultants who are collectively being paid more than $700,000 for about nine months of work,’ according to a 2009 Detroit Free Press article.”

In 2011, Republican Governor Rich Snyder ushered through two laws that had a negative effect on DPS. The first law, Public Act 4, gave the emergency manager total control and removed all powers from the elected school board. The second law, Public Act 436, created a state school district called the Education Achievement Authority (EAA) which took effect in 2013.

The EAA’s first task was to take over 15 of Detroit’s lowest performing schools. This immediately removed another 11,000 students from DPS and further stressed its finances.

Counting Robert Bobb there were five emergency managers at DPS between 2009 and 2016. Mercedes Schneider reports that “The most recent Detroit Public Schools emergency manager, Darnell Earley, is chiefly responsible for water contamination in Flint, Michigan.”

By 2016, the schools of DPS were in such a disgraceful condition that the New York Times called them “crumbling” and “destitute.” The Times’ article included this quote: ‘“We have rodents out in the middle of the day,’ said Ms. Aaron, a teacher of 18 years. ‘Like they’re coming to class.”’

July 1, 2017 the EAA returned the fifteen schools to DPS and the Michigan legislature finally acted to mitigate the debt crisis created in Holland and Lancing not Detroit. Also on July 1, 2017 Nikolai Vitti the new superintendent of DPS took on the challenge or rehabilitating the public schools of Detroit.

Robert Bobb was handsomely paid. So was John Covington. So was Barbara Byrd-Bennett (who is now in prison, after being found guilty of taking kickbacks while CEO of the Chicago public schools). The leaders made lots of money.

The charters were a disaster. The Educational Achievement Authority was an even bigger disaster, consuming high administrative costs and producing nothing for the children of Detroit.

Ultican identifies one of the villains in this chain of events that harmed the children and the public schools of Detroit: the Skillman Foundation of Detroit. With “the best of intentions,” this local foundation has supported every raid on the city, its children, and its public schools. It continues to support the Destroy Public Education Movement despite its repeated disasters and its failed experiments on children.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Detroit, Education Industry, Failure, Fraud, Michigan, Privatization

Sue Legg: Twenty Years of School Choice in Florida, Part 2

By dianeravitch
November 9, 2018 //
4

Sue Legg, the former director of education for Florida’s League of Women Voters, wrote this series at my request. She was assessment and evaluation contractor for the Fl. DOE for twenty years while on the faculty at the University of Florida. This is part 2.

Twenty Years Later: Impact of Charter and Private Sector Schools

With support from the state, charter and private schools enroll 22% of Florida’s three million children. Charters receive the same per student funding as regular public schools. Private schools receive tax credit scholarships to avoid Florida’s constitutional ban on vouchers funded directly by the legislature.

Nearly half of Florida’s 655 charters are run by for-profit management firms dominated by two firms: Academica and Charter Schools USA (CSUSA).

In 2016, In the Public Interest reported that Academica’s real estate arm controls more than $155 million in south Florida real estate. They essentially own the property for half of their schools and lease it to themselves through the non-profit charter boards they establish. Some of its charters pay exorbitant leases to the Catholic church or other religious entities. Using church facilities is not illegal if there is no religious instruction or other artifacts in classrooms.

CSUSA operates in a similar manner. CSUSA has its own real estate company. We tracked the history of one such school and found that CSUSA had purchased a former ATT call center for about $1.2 million. They flipped the building several times to have the property reappraised, and invested $1.5 million in air conditioning etc. The final appraisal was for $9 million, and the CSUSA board signed an escalating lease for over a million dollars per year which would in time surpass the school budget. Teachers are paid from the remaining budget which seldom allows for retirement or health benefits. Thus, teacher turnover tends to be more than double the rate for traditional public schools.

In 2016, the U.S. Office of the Inspector General delineated the similarities between charter financing and the subprime loan crisis that wreaked havoc with the housing industry. Real estate loans have minimal annual payments with large balloon payments when the loan becomes due.

Independently run charters survive at first on start up funds from the state and federal government. Even though charters are exempt from the regulations governing the quality of school facilities, many complain they are underfunded. Some are housed in abandoned strip malls or former business locations that need remodeling.

The lack of regulation was supposed to spur innovation. Charters must meet local fire and safety codes, employ teachers who are certified within 18 months, and administer state assessments. Otherwise, they are exempt from operational district oversight and state school facilities codes. District school boards can only intervene if charters cannot pay their bills or they receive failing grades two years in a row on the state assessment tests. There is no limit on charter expansion, and the State Board of Education may overrule, and does, proposals that are not approved locally.

Where does this lack of regulation lead? The simple answer is profiteering, corruption and closures. The management of Newpoint charters is the current scandal. The company has been charged with racketeering involving 57 million dollars in the operation of its 15 schools. Investigative reporting by the Miami Herald, Orlando Sentinel, and Tampa Bay Times have documented many other scandals in which charters close without warning, funds are collected for unenrolled students,

Charters close at an alarming rate. At least 373 Florida charters closed in the last twenty years. They take the money with them. Even some proponents of charters are having doubts.

Parents are finding out the hard way that they have no voice in charter school management. Erika Donalds, a former school board member whose husband is a legislator, sponsored the doomed constitutional amendment 8 to create a separate charter system. She also co-founded one of the Classical Academies where she was a board member. The charter was based on ‘Christian values’, but had a principal who created an environment “where fraud can occur without detection”. Donalds withdrew her children. She has, however, formed an alliance with the wife of the 2017 Florida Senate president to open another Classical Academy.

Past attempts by some legislators to limit the ‘self-dealing’ and profiteering failed. In September 2018, Integrity-Florida released its latest report on needed reforms. Millions of tax payer dollars have been lost to both excessive profits and criminal misuse of funds. Legislation is needed to require a justification for opening a charter and improved regulation to prevent profiteering. At least now, the public is growing aware of the financial threats to our public schools. No longer is the problem ‘over there’. It is affecting everyone.

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

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
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