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Nevada: Time to Close Down the Worst, Least Accountable Charter Schools in America

By dianeravitch
July 9, 2018 //
4

Charter schools in Nevada are a national joke. They can fail and fail and fail, and the state doesn’t care. For charter schools, there is no accountability. CREDO Director Macke Raymond said at a national Education Writers Association meeting in 2015, directing her remarks to Ohions, who spend $1 billion annually on charters: “Be very glad that you have Nevada, so you are not the worst.” (https://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/03/ohios_charter_schools_ridicule.html)

Clark County first grade teacher Angie Sullivan recently wrote to legislators and journalists:

We need to close the DeVos Charter.

Not in February. Now.

DeVos proclaimed Nevada Virtual Academy an example of success. A direct lie.

https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/02/04/513220220/betsy-devos-graduation-rate-mistake

On June 25, the Charter Authority will openly discuss revoking that charter.

Click to access 180625-Notice.pdf

Flooding Nevada with K-12 ads. The for-profit charter proclaimed a success by DeVos while huge number of Nevada Virtual students are not participating, scoring well, or graduating.

Empty threats given on Governor letterhead. Who is accountable for this extreme mess?

Nothing done.

Nevada Virtual Academy is not scared of being closed. Nevada does not close failing charters or even demand regular academic data. Charters will continue to take tax payer money without being accountable. Creating the largest alternative lowest of the low performing school system in the state and possibly the nation.

______________________________

We need an Nevada Charter audit.

Given Nevada’s total disregard for charter school accountability. We are an example to the nation of the extreme distinction which occurs without any accountability.

On-line charters in particular have questionable practices.

Are students actually enrolled? When looking at on-line numbers, how can so many students be supposedly enrolled in on-line instruction but not be taking high stakes testing?

The numbers are telling. We pay. Students do not test. Students do not graduate. Those who do test are scoring lower than everyone else.

Perhaps on-line charters should only be paid for the handful of students actually participating. The tax payer should be concerned. Millions being paid for on-line student learning and it is highly questionable.

An audit should be demanded.

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Half the Nevada Charters need to be closed. If they are floundering in financial and academic failure, close them. And all campuses need to return and report, not in clumps, site by site.

Zero Failing Nevada Charters have been closed. Not even those without funds to continue – floundering in receivership and demanding money to continue in bankrupt dysfunction. Nevada throwing good money after bad. The tax payer should be disgusted with $350 million in Nevada Charter School waste.

No accountability.

No transparency.

________________________

We should all be disgusted by our political leaders.

One set of rigorous standards for Nevada Public Schools which are ironically turned into charters. Why is that a good idea? The data shows tax payer money will be misused by Nevada Charters. Nevada Charters are a national disgrace. Find a state with worse charters than Nevada. I dare you.

Thank you Nevada politicians and legislators present and former who are heavy advocates on both sides for this embarrassing disgrace. Many hold positions on charter board and groups. You are failures.

Politicians, you have made this incredible mess. I suggest you act quickly to find a remedy. I’m worried this is criminal and your fingerprints are all over it.

The Teacher,

Angie

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

Valerie Strauss: How Bill Gates Blew Away $575 Million on Teacher Evaluation

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2018 //
28

We have by now read about the independent Rand study of Bill Gates’ bet on Making test-based teacher evaluation the keystone of education reform. I distinctly recall Melinda Gates saying on PBS that “we now know” how to get a great teacher in every classroom in America.

Well, no, they didn’t.

The Gates put up $215 million and found willing suckers, I mean, partners to add even more of their own money to bring the total to $575 million to test the Gates’s shiny new idea.

It failed.

It exhausted the reserves of Hillsborough County in Florida, where MaryEllen Elia was Superintendent. She was fired but landed on her feet as State Commissioner of Education in New York. Believe it or not, the fiasco in Hillsborough County did not diminished her love of testing.

Valerie Strauss tells the sad saga here of Bill Gates’ latest failure.

“The six-year project began in 2009 when the foundation gave millions of dollars to three public school districts — Hillsborough County in Florida (the first to start the work), Memphis and Pittsburgh. The districts supplied matching funds. Four charter management organizations also were involved: Alliance College-Ready Public Schools; Aspire Public Schools; Green Dot Public Schools; and Partnerships to Uplift Communities Schools.

“The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation pumped nearly $215 million into the project while the partnering school organizations supplied their own money, for a total cost of $575 million. The aim was to create teacher evaluation systems that depended on student standardized test scores and observations by “peer evaluators.” These systems, it was conjectured, could identify the teachers who were most effective in improving student academic performance.”

There is a silver lining.

“In 2014, he gave a nearly hour-long interview at Harvard University, saying, “It would be great if our education stuff worked, but that we won’t know for probably a decade.””

It’s 2018.so far, nothing funded by Gates has reformed education. We have only six more years to wait, and maybe then he will invest in children’s health or something else where he has a chance of doing good work instead of messing up the schools.

Categories Accountability, Failure, Florida, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Teacher Evaluations, VAM

Louisiana Educator: Rand Explains Why the Obama-Duncan Teacher Evaluation Program Failed

By dianeravitch
June 28, 2018 //
16

Michael DesHotels, an experienced educator in Louisiana, explains here why the Rand study concluded that the Obama-Duncan teacher evaluation program flopped.

Gates wasted $575 million. The federal and state governments wasted billions. Thousands of teachers lost their careers and reputations. Another reformer disaster.

Unfortunately, the Obama education department had convinced most of the country to implement the same defective evaluation system at the same time before we could see the results of the study. So just like implementation of Common Core, which was also pushed upon school systems by the Gates Foundation, an expensive and time consuming teacher evaluation system was implemented without knowing if it would work. All that money and effort just drove a lot of good teachers out of the profession without improving student learning.

The new teacher evaluation system sponsored by the Gates Foundation and the Obama Race to the Top grants included basing teacher evaluations on student test scores and intensive observation of teachers using a strict rubric for teaching methods. The end result would supposedly identify the highly effective teachers as well as the ineffective ones. Then, teachers could be fired or awarded merit pay based upon their ranking in the evaluation system. Some reformers had theorized that such a system would dramatically improve student academic performance. There was even a theory that low performing students could be brought up to grade level performance by being exposed to highly effective teachers for only three successive years. It was believed that socioeconomic factors affecting student performance could be ignored by just fixing the teachers. These theories have now been proven wrong. Scapegoating teachers for problems of society just does not work, but it does drive good teachers out of the profession, and discourages bright young persons from entering the profession. Result: a serious teacher shortage.

Louisiana went whole hog on VAM (basing teacher evaluations on student test scores) and highly structured teacher observation because we were told that there were findings that proved that any student could be converted into a high academic achiever after only three years of instruction by highly effective teachers. This theory developed by Hanushek and others unfortunately was not scaleable (didn’t work) even though now our entire teacher evaluation system has been revised to supposedly identify highly effective as well as ineffective teachers. Louisiana law now bases teacher job security and even merit pay on highly dubious student performance measures. It turns out that VAM scores for each teacher are extremely unstable (and dangerously irrelevant) from year to year. It turns out that very little of a teacher’s VAM score depends on her/his performance in the classroom. Socioeconomic factors and noise in the highly imprecise VAM formulas routinely outweigh the actual performance of the teacher. In addition, teachers teaching untested subjects have a major advantage over teachers of tested subjects in winning merit pay and job security.

Here is an interesting fact about Louisiana teacher evaluation reform: Did you know that the new teacher evaluation rubric was actually designed by a person (Rayne Martin) who had never taught or evaluated teachers. Before coming to the Louisiana Education Department, Martin had worked for the Housing Authority in Chicago. She had never received teacher training or evaluation training. This is typical of most of the education “deform” we have been subjected to in the last 13 years. Unfortunately, here in Louisiana, we are still stuck with VAM and the new observation matrix for the evaluation of teachers that was developed by a non-teacher who has long left Louisiana.

So what did the Rand study find in its nationwide evaluation of VAM and the accompanying high stakes evaluation of teachers? Basically it has made no difference whatsoever in student performance nationwide. Zero results! After all that money and after the gnashing of teeth by so many thousands of teachers. We have produced however a growing teacher shortage, probably because all those potentially “highly effective” teachers found that they could make more money in jobs that did not use a form of torture to rate their performance….

Read it all!

Categories Failure, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Shortage, VAM (value-added modeling)

Andre Agassi, Tennis Legend, Now Profits from Privatizing Public Education

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2018 //
32

Andre Agassi became a tennis legend as a young man. He started tennis early, having dropped out of school at the end of eighth grade to make his mark on clay courts.

Then he opened his own charter school in Las Vegas, and promised that every student would be prepared for a selective college (Agassi never completed high school). Agassi plowed $18 million into the school to assure that it had the best of everything. He told the New York Times in 2004 that he wanted his school to be a model for the nation.

Unfortunately the Agassi school was a disaster. Teachers and principals cycled in and out through a revolving door. It had six principals in its first decade. The cheerleading coach was accused of running a prostitution ring on the side. Security guards complained that the kids were out of control. The scores were about the same as the district’s, despite what teachers called “a chaotic learning environment.” (Source: Amy Kingsley, “Learning Curve,” Las Vegas Citylife, March 14, 2012).

It ended up on the state’s list of low-performing schools. At the very bottom.

What does a state do with a low-performing charter school? Turn it into a public school? Absolutely not! It was handed over to the Democracy Prep Charter chain of New York.

But the word “failure” is not in Andre Agassi’s vocabulary. Last year, he went to the big annual entrepreneur’s conference at Arizona State University to boast about the millions he was now making building new charters. And he pretends that his school in Las Vegas was a phenomenal success.

Andre Agassi, who was once the number one tennis player in the world, has helped build 70 charter schools in the past four years, educating 33,000 students. And that’s just the beginning, he told hundreds of attendees at the 2017 ASU/GSV Summit here Wednesday.

“We have $1 billion more to spend,” he said.

Agassi described his passion for education, his drive to scale up successful charter schools across the nation, and the business model he’s using to do so in an interview with sportscaster Ted Robinson.

“It took me 14 years to build one school in Clark County [Nev.] for 1,300 students,” said Agassi. That school, the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy, is a K-12 public charter school that educates students in a low-income neighborhood of West Las Vegas. The academy was constructed with $40 million raised by the Andre Agassi Foundation for Education

At least he has the good sense not to replicate his own failed charter school. Why bother, when he can make $1 Million for every charter school he builds and opens.

Charter schools that have been funded through the Turner-Agassi fund have included KIPP, Rocketship, Academica, Franklin Academy and Lighthouse Academies.

Agassi knows nothing about education but he knows how to turn a profit. In 2023, he bought a building in the Bronx, New York, for $4.3 Million. Five years later, in a related-party transaction, his charter building sold the site to his charter schools for $24 Million. Somebody pocketed $20 Million. Isn’t the charter industry amazing?

What a shame to see a tennis icon reduced to charter shill, profiting by hurting public schools.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Failure, Nevada, Privatization

Peter Greene: Architect of NCLB Insists It Was a Great Success, But No One Believes Him

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2018 //
8

Peter Greene writes about the sad sad story of Sandy Kress, the lawyer who is widely acknowledged as the architect of No Child Left Behind.

Kress went from power and fame in D.C. to lobbying for Pearson in Texas.

Then when Texas abandoned Pearson, Kress was really sad.

While almost everyone in the nation agrees that NCLB was a disaster, at least three people disagree: Presdent George W. Bush, Margaret Spellings, and Sandy Kress. Every once in a while, Kress publishes an op-ed piece about the greatness of a federal law that imposed standardized testing on every student in public school from grades 3-8. He did it again, and Peter takes his claims apart, one by one.

“The Bottom Line

“Sandy Kress got it wrong in Texas, and he got it wrong with No Child Left Behind, a program that virtually nobody holds up as an example of a great government program that achieved great things. And unlike some reformsters who have shown a willingness to say, “Okay, some of this just isn’t working,” Kress keeps on insisting that we are on the brink of educational disaster and people have to use his great ideas right now!

“We’ve been field testing test-centered accountability for almost twenty years– long enough that entire generation of children have been educated while soaking in the stuff– and we have nothing to show for it but corporate profits, people abandoning the teaching profession, and educational results that show the gaps created when schools dropped actual education in order to prep for the Big Standardized Test. We have tried Kress’s ideas. They have failed.

“I’m not going to argue that the Texas legislature has the answers. But they are not going to find the answers by listening to Sandy Kress.“

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Failure, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Pearson

Pennsylvania: Home to Unregulated Cyber Charter Frauds

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2018 //
4

Pennsylvania has many cyber charters. They are all failing schools. The legislature doesn’t care. Two cyber charter operators were arrested and convicted for stealing millions of dollars. One of them–Nicholas Trombetta– is awaiting sentencing for tax evasion on the $8 million he stole from the cyber charter he founded (Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School), the other–June Brown, founder of two cyber charters–was convicted but not sent to jail because the judge accepted her plea that she was too old and frail to be incarcerated (she is younger than me). Trombetta committed a crime by evading taxes, but stealing $8 million from his cyber charter was not a crime under lax Pennsylvania law, according to the article cited here.

Greg Windle writes here about the failure of the Legislature to reign in cyber charter corruption, fraud, waste, and abuse of taxpayers’ dollars.

Even choice advocates are embarrassed by cyber charters, but they keep on going, collecting tax dollars for rotten services.

No cyber charter school in Pennsylvania have ever received a passing academic score from the state, and very few have come close, according to information recently highlighted in a report from the office of Democratic State Rep. James Roebuck of Philadelphia.

Roebuck and other House Democrats have assembled a package of bills that would further regulate charters by reforming how they use reserve funds, rules for leasing buildings, special education payments, contracting, the teacher evaluation system, disclosure in advertising, school building closures, and the transfer of school records. The package would not single out cybers, but other legislation has been introduced that would reduce their per-student reimbursement.

Pennsylvania has 13 cyber charters enrolling more than 34,000 students, or 10 percent of all the cyber students in the country.

These schools are authorized not by local districts, but by the Pennsylvania Department of Education. But districts must send per-pupil payments to cyber charters for each local student they enroll, and the payments are the same as for brick-and-mortar charters, even though cybers have fewer expenses.

This has proven frustrating not only to the districts and other proponents of traditional public schools, but to several groups that favor school choice and charters…

No cyber charter school in Pennsylvania have ever received a passing academic score from the state, and very few have come close, according to information recently highlighted in a report from the office of Democratic State Rep. James Roebuck of Philadelphia.

Roebuck and other House Democrats have assembled a package of bills that would further regulate charters by reforming how they use reserve funds, rules for leasing buildings, special education payments, contracting, the teacher evaluation system, disclosure in advertising, school building closures, and the transfer of school records. The package would not single out cybers, but other legislation has been introduced that would reduce their per-student reimbursement.

Pennsylvania has 13 cyber charters enrolling more than 34,000 students, or 10 percent of all the cyber students in the country.

These schools are authorized not by local districts, but by the Pennsylvania Department of Education. But districts must send per-pupil payments to cyber charters for each local student they enroll, and the payments are the same as for brick-and-mortar charters, even though cybers have fewer expenses.

This has proven frustrating not only to the districts and other proponents of traditional public schools, but to several groups that favor school choice and charters…

It’s been a difficult school year for many U.S. cybers. Ohio’s largest chain was forced to close mid-year, and others closed down in Georgia, Indiana, Nevada, and New Mexico. In the past, it has been rare for states to close cyber charters despite low achievement across the sector and several financial scandals…

Of the 43 states that allow charter schools, only 35 allow cyber charters. The eight that do not are Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Virginia. Only 23 of the states that allow cybers have actually authorized any, according to the report from the National Association of Charter School Authorizers. Those states plus Washington D.C. have a total of 135 full-time cyber charter schools.

Cybers make up just 2 percent of all charters in the country.

At its peak, Pennsylvania had 14 cyber charters, more than 10 percent of the nation’s total. However, Education Plus Cyber closed in December 2015 during the state budget crisis after its bank pulled the school’s line of credit. Some staff also alleged financial mismanagement…

Out of the 13 full-time cyber charters in Pennsylvania, educating over 34,000 students, only four have come close to receiving a passing grade of 70. The rest have received the lowest rating on the state’s academic rubric every year….

Larry Feinberg has his own frustrations with cyber charters and gw attributes them to a poorly written charter school law. Feinberg has been a school board member in Haverford Township for over 20 years, is on the board of the Pennsylvania School Board Association, and co-founded the Keystone State Education Coalition — a group that advocates for traditional public education, including stronger regulations on charters.

“Every month in school board meetings, I have to approve payments to cyber charters,” Feinberg said. “Our test scores are 30, 40, 50 points higher than theirs. We never authorized any of them. … They are all authorized by the Pennsylvania Department of Education. That allows them to reach in and take our tax dollars.

“There’s just no way it can cost as much money to educate them without a building and full-time staff. So there’s huge profits to be made.”

Categories Failure, For-Profit, Fraud, Pennsylvania, Virtual Charter Schools

Missouri: New State School Board Uncertain About How to Evaluate Charters

By dianeravitch
June 15, 2018 //
9

During the tenure of former Governor Eric Greitens, Missouri had no state school board because the legislature refused to confirm his appointees. The new governor appointed new members and at last there is a quorum. Yesterday they had a meeting to renew charter schools, which are allowed only in St. Louis and Kansas City. Five charters were renewed despite their middling performance.

Typically, the board has judged charter performance against the performance of the district, but the charters said this was unfair.

Charlie Shields, president of the state board, said that it was time to review charter school laws.

“Shields was critical of the performance of the St. Louis charter schools renewed Thursday, arguing that they do not convincingly outperform St. Louis Public Schools. He said the state Legislature allowed charter schools to operate in Missouri on the premise that charter schools would be easy to open, but poor-performing charter schools should be easy to close.”

St. Louis was taken over by the state because of low performance and is hoping to have local control restored. Yet charter schools do not outperform the district, and charter leaders say that it’s unfair to expect them to do so. Once again, we see reformers moving the goal posts and lowering expectations.

Whiners. Remember when we were told that charter schools would “save poor kids from failing public schools” and would “close the achievement gap.” They don’t and they haven’t. They fight to survive because they want to.

Under Republican control, don’t expect Missouri to set meaningful accountability standards for charters.

The question now is:

“Who will save poor kids from failing charters?”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, Missouri, Privatization

Indiana’s Virtual Charters: “How Long Do We Let Them Fail”?

By dianeravitch
June 15, 2018 //
7

This is a refreshing development. Republican legislators in Indiana are asking whether it is time to pull the plug on failing virtual charter schools.

“As a group of state officials convene for the first time Tuesday to examine virtual charter schools, two prominent Indiana Republican lawmakers are calling for the state to intervene in the dismal performance of the schools.

““Whatever we’re doing is not working, because I don’t see where they’re improving,” said Ryan Mishler, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, adding, “With a virtual, if you’re failing so many years in a row, maybe we need to look at how long do we let them fail before we say you can’t operate.”

“Mishler and House education chair Bob Behning told Chalkbeat that the oversight of virtual charter schools needs to be addressed, whether through changes to state law or action by the Indiana State Board of Education.

“Indiana will have seven virtual charter schools at the start of the next school year, with three opening in the past year alone and one shutting down amid chronic bad grades. But their academic performance raises questions — four of the five schools graded by the state last year received F ratings.

“Even for students who need a more flexible alternative to traditional brick-and-mortar schools, Mishler said, “If they’re not doing well, if they’re not graduating, how good is it for them?””

Will wonders never cease?

Categories Education Reform, Failure, Indiana, Virtual Charter Schools

Tom Ultican on Philadelphia, Another School Choice Failure

By dianeravitch
June 14, 2018 //
7

Tom Ultican, recently retired teacher of physics, has embarked on a mission to cover the Destroy Public Education movement. His posts have taken him to several cities, where the school choice movement has destroyed public education without putting anything better in its place. In fact, the “new” schools are usually worse than the public schools.

In his latest foray, he studies the destruction wrought by the Destroy Public Education movement on the public schools of Philadelphia.

The trouble started when Republican Governor Tom Ridge hired the Edison Project to conduct a study of the Philadelphia public schools and come up with solutions (such as, taking charge of the entire district themselves, nothing like conflict of interest to stir the commercial juices.)

Ultican relies heavily on Samuel Abrams’ excellent book Education and the Commercial Mindset, which began life as a study of Chris Whittle’s Edison Project.

Things went downhill from there. The whole point of “reform” was not to make the schools better, but to save money.

“Edison’s report was not impartial. Both the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News called it a charade. (Abrams 116) The report was overly critical of the school district and recommended that the Edison Project be put in charge of running it. Edison also called for reforming “failing” schools by turning them into charter schools.

“Helen Gym (now on the Philadelphia city council) speaking for Asian Americans United, asked, “If this [privatization] is so innovative why aren’t they doing it in Lower Merion.” (Abrams 114) This turns out to have been a perceptive question. Lower Merion is 85% white and rich. Still today, there appear to be no charter schools in Lower Merion Township. Charter schools mostly exist in poor communities without the political capital to protect their schools.”

Broadies, Broadies everywhere! Closing public schools. Starving them. Opening charters. Destroying the district. The great Charade of “Reform.”

Categories Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Failure, Philadelphia, Privatization

Audrey Amrein-Beardsley: Why New Mexico’s Teacher Evaluation System is Ineffective, Invalid, and Biased

By dianeravitch
June 12, 2018 //
5

In December 2015, a state district judge in New Mexico put a halt to the use of New Mexico’s teacher evaluation system, which then State Commissioner Hanna Skandera had imported from Florida. Her replacement since Skandera’s departure, Chris Ruzskowski (former TFA) praised the state’s harshly punitive system as the toughest in the nation. In Skandera’s seven years leading the New Mexico schools, the state NAEP scores were stagnant. They are in the NAEP cellar with the poorest Southern states. None of her “Florida reforms” made any difference.

Audrey Amrein-Beardsley here reviews what is now known about this teacher evaluation program. As is typical, 70% of teachers do not teach the tested subjects. Teachers in affluent districts get higher scores. Teachers who teach the neediest kids get the lowest scores. Caucasian teachers get higher scores than non-Caucasians.

It may soon be a moot issue, as all three Democratic candidates and the one Republican running for Governor have said they would overhaul or discard the flawed evaluation system.

Congratulations to the AFT of New Mexico, which fought this idiotic system in court and halted its consequences.

Categories Albuquerque, Failure, New Mexico, Teacher Evaluations
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