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Detroit: Families, Students, and Teachers Speak Out Against “Choice”

By dianeravitch
February 20, 2018 //
8

 

At a town hall meeting in Detroit, students, families, and teachers spoke out against the damage caused to them by the false promise of “school choice.” Allie Gross covered the meeting for the Detroit Free Press.

One parent described the wonderful school attended by his child with cerebral palsy; it was to save money.

“In 2008, Alfred Wright enrolled his son, Timothy, in kindergarten at Oakman Elementary/Orthopedic, a small school on the Detroit’s northwest side that specialized in teaching students with special needs.

“Timothy had recently been diagnosed with cerebral palsy, and the school — which came with spacious hallways, discreet changing rooms, small class sizes, and an on-site nurse — seemed like the perfect match.

“And, according to Wright, it was. For five years, he watched his son thrive in the close-knit and accepting community. Oakman not only was prepared to accommodate Timothy’s needs but it helped Wright, as a parent, better understand his child.

“But then the seemingly unexpected happened. In spring 2013, Roy Roberts, Detroit Public Schools’ second emergency manager, announced that Oakman would be one of six schools to close the following school year. It would add to the list of nearly 100 district schools that had shuttered since 2009, when the state took over DPS due to finance.

LWright and the rest of the parents were given two traditional public school options: one that was 1.2 miles away and the other that was 2.4 miles. Both choices fell within the bottom 5 percent of schools in the state for academic performance. More notably, neither were handicap accessible.

“All of the things we feared happened,” Wright said, explaining how issues at Henderson Academy, where Timothy ultimately ended up, ranged from bullying and isolation to a lack of knowledge and preparedness when it came to educating students with special needs.

”This reality — instability, uncertainty and inefficient resources — is why on Tuesday night, Wright and Timothy made their way to Wayne State University’s Law School to participate in an Education Town Hall hosted by the #WeChoose Campaign. A movement made up of 25 organizations from across that country — including the NAACP, Advancement Project, Dignity in Schools and Journey for Justice Alliance — the group is working to support racial justice and end educational inequality via, among many things, town hall gatherings that bring attention to what the group sees as “the illusion of school choice.”

“Parents, students, and educators do not choose the sabotage of their neighborhood schools, school closings, zero tolerance policies that target black and brown students, punitive standardized testing school deserts,” the group’s mission statement explains. “We choose equity, not the scam called school choice.”

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Detroit, Education Industry, Failure, Parents, Privatization, Students, Teachers

Denver: Reformer Admits That Disruptive Reforms Failed to Help Poor Kids

By dianeravitch
February 15, 2018 //
18

 

Theresa Peña served as president of the Denver school board when reform began more than a decade ago.

She describes the promises and high hopes.

Now she admits that reform failed. 

The kids who lost were the poor black and Hispanic students, she says.

She writes:

Almost 11 years ago, when I served on the Denver Board of Education, the board and then-Superintendent Michael Bennet published a lengthy manifesto detailing how we planned to transform and radically improve public education in Denver.

They published their manifesto. They said:

“Ten years from now, let them say that Denver was the vanguard for reform in public education. Let them say, 10 years from now, that in Denver we saw what others could not, and laid down our adult burdens to lift up our children. Let them say that a spark flew in Denver that ignited a generation of educators, children, parents, and communities, and gave them courage to abandon the status quo for a shimmering future. We can do this in Denver; it is simply a matter of imagination and will.”

In 2007 our board believed we were starting a revolution. We were going to dramatically change outcomes for Denver students. We were going to construct a new educational system that served students first.

We believed that the goals in our strategic plan, known as the Denver Plan, would close the achievement gap and set a new path forward for all graduates of Denver Public Schools.

I am writing today to tell you that we failed. And, as a city and a school district we are still collectively failing our neediest students.

The Denver public school system is now a darling of the rightwing.

Last year, Betsy DeVos visited Denver twice; she praised the city for its charter efforts, but declared that it needed vouchers as well.

The Brookings Institution released its “Education Choice and Competition Index,” which ranked Denver first in the nation. The Index was created by Grover Whitehurst, who was George W. Bush’s choice to lead the Department of Education’s research division.

Charter champion David Osborne showered praise on Denver’s “portfolio” strategy in the rightwing journal Education Next.

Kevin Hesla of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools raved about Denver’s commitment to the privatization agenda, again in the rightwing Education Next.

Denver is where Democrats gave up the fight for public education and invited the fox of privatization into the henhouse. The conservative media and think tanks love Denver.

Peña dissents. She writes:

My conclusion calls into question the conventional wisdom about Denver Public Schools. Over the past decade, under the leadership of Bennet and his successor, Tom Boasberg, DPS has gained a national reputation as a forward-thinking, even visionary school district, which welcomes high-quality charter schools and grants the most deserving of its own schools unprecedented degrees of autonomy from the district bureaucracy. Enrollment has grown and student achievement has improved.

While elements of that sterling national reputation are deserved, and some real gains have occurred, they have been far too slow and inequitable. On perhaps the most critical measure of success, literacy in early elementary schools, low-income and minority students have improved at a much slower rate than their Anglo and higher-income peers. This has caused Denver’s abysmal achievement gaps to grow even wider.

In 2017 64 percent of students who did not qualify for free or reduced lunch were reading and writing at grade level compared to 26 percent of students who qualified for free and reduced lunch, a 38 percent gap. And only one of three low-income third-graders read and write at grade level.

Our aspirations of a decade ago have not been realized. Until and unless Boasberg and the Board of Education take concrete steps to fundamentally change the district to serve its students and schools, real progress will remain elusive. Over time, I have come to doubt whether this is even possible.

The new reform board promised innovation, school autonomy, transparency, accountability, closer monitoring of results, and higher expectations.

She concludes:

We failed on all counts.

Teacher turnover and principal turnover remain large. Achievement gaps are as large as ever, possibly larger.

Denver, the shining model of reform by charters and test-based accountability, is no model at all.

So says one of the reform leaders who was there at the beginning.

Jeannie Kaplan was a school board member also during those heady years. She quickly became disillusioned with the disruptive tactics. She is not sure whether Theresa Peña means what she says or has something else in mind. But she has long believed that the “reforms” failed the neediest kids.

What say you, Senator Michael Bennett? What say you, Superintendent Tom Boasberg?

Why not focus on what works? Reduced class sizes; support and retention of teachers and principals; collaboration; school nurses and clinics. Talk about root causes of low academic performance and focus on changes that address the root causes.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Denver, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Privatization, Testing

John Merrow: Time for Reformers to Admit that Test-Based “Reform” Failed in D.C.

By dianeravitch
February 15, 2018 //
64

Ever since John Merrow realized that Michelle Rhee was a con artist, he has been on a tear, exposing the fraudulent  claims of reformers.

One of them is that the District of Columbia is a paradigm of reform, the very quintessence of the miracles that happen when test scores are the center of a system of rewards and punishments.

The recent graduation rate scandal sent a loud signal, bringing back memories of the test score scandal in 2011 that was swept under the rug.

Merrow writes here:

“The emperor has no clothes, and it’s high time that everyone acknowledged that. Proof positive is Washington, DC, long the favorite of the ‘school reform’ crowd, which offered it as evidence that test-based reforms that rewarded teachers for high student scores (and fired those with low scores) was the magic bullet for turning around troubled urban school districts.

“But now we know that about one-third of recent DC high school graduates–900 students– had no business receiving diplomas, and that they marched across the stage last Spring because some adults changed their grades or pushed them through the farce known as ‘credit recovery,’ in which students can receive credit for a semester by spending a few hours over a week’s time in front of a computer.

“The reliable Catherine Gewertz of Education Week provides a through (and thoroughly depressing) account of the DC story, which she expands to include data from DC teachers:  “In a survey of 616 District of Columbia teachers conducted after the scandal broke, 47 percent said they’d felt pressured or coerced into giving grades that didn’t accurately reflect what students had learned. Among high school teachers, that number rose to 60 percent. More than 2 in 10 said that their student grades or attendance data had been changed by someone else after teachers submitted them.”

First came George W. Bush’s “raise the test scores” campaign, followed by Arne Duncan’s “raise the graduation rate campaign.” Both of them produced lies (cf. Campbell’s Law).  Both superficial reforms proved to be malignant in their impact upon students, teachers, and schools.  Students were lied to about their proficiency, administrators and teachers cheated, school curricula were debased, standards were lowered, and confidence in public schools dropped.

Republicans and Democrats (CAP) are scrambling to work around this latest debacle.

Merrow reminds his readers: Henderson=Rhee. No change. No evidence that Antwan Wilson will change anything because he comes from the same cult of test-and-punish.

Another setback for “reformers,” who never admit failure even as their sand castles dissolve.

Categories Accountability, District of Columbia, Education Industry, Failure, Fraud, Graduation rates, Testing

Sacramento: Charter School Closes Without Warning

By dianeravitch
February 14, 2018 //
4

One day it was open. The next day it closed. Gone.

That’s a charter school for you!

http://www.kcra.com/article/sacramento-charter-school-shuts-down-without-warning/16754549

Categories California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, Privatization

DeVos Launches “Backpack” Trial to Spur School Choice

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2018 //
21

You have to hand it to Betsy DeVos. She never gives up on a bad idea, no matter what the evidence shows. With clear findings that vouchers don’t produce better results, with increasing numbers of charter frauds, and declining enthusiasm for charter schools, she does not waver in her commitment to destroy public education. No matter how much damage she inflicts on children, she pushes forward with her failed libertarian theories because she is “doing it for the kids.”

And now, DeVos puts Backpack funding in place in a federal pilot:

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2018/02/essa_weighted_student_funding_pilot_devos.html

“DeVos and her team have been especially interested in the pilot, pretty much from the time they took office. That could be because, in theory, adopting a weighted student funding formula could make it easier for districts to operate school choice programs, since money would be tied to individual students and could therefore follow them to charter or virtual public schools. Importantly, though, districts that opt to participate in the pilot don’t necessarily have to use it to further school choice.”

My advice: if you get the money, spend it where kids have teachers are certified to meet the needs of children with disabilities and children learning English.

Choice that busts up the public schools does not help children. Itcadvances the long term goals of libertarian zealots like the DeVos family and the Koch brothers.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Failure, Fraud, School Choice

North Carolina: GOP Leader Berger Wants Merit Pay, Even Though It Has Failed Consistently for 100 Years

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2018 //
19

 

Phil Berger, leader of the Tea Party-dominated State Senate in North Carolina, thinks that anyone who opposes merit pay must be North Korean, but high school teacher Stuart Egan explains here why he is wrong. 

He doesn’t need a carrot or a stick to do his best in the classroom.

He doesn’t want to compete with his colleagues.

Students take the tests, not teachers.

He is not the only one who taught them.

The state had a bonus pay plan twenty years ago, and it didn’t work.

There is more, and I would add: Merit pay, bonus pay, and pay-for-performanc3 plans have been tried for 100 years. They have never worked. Teachers are doing the best they know how. Offering them money doesn’t make them work harder. If you want them to be better teachers, devise plans for them to work with mentors or to return to graduate courses. Read my chapter on merit pay in “Reign of Error.”

Nothing fails like failure. Again and again. Isn’t that the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting to get different results?

Categories Failure, Merit pay, North Carolina

Good News! Phony Billionaire Charter Group Collapses: ADDENDUM

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2018 //
22

 

One of the nation’s leading corporate education reform groups— Families for Excellent Schools—has collapsed. It adopted a name to suggest that it spoke for poor black and Hispanic families, but the families it represented were wealthy financiers from Wall Street, Greenwich, Connecticut, the Walton Family, and the Eli Broad family.

This is the group that spent millions to run ads attacking Mayor deBlasio when he had the gall to challenge Eva Moskowitz’s demand for free space in public schools and the right to force the city to pay for any space she was required to rent. Eva had the support of the powerful financiers of FES and Governor Cuomo, and together they beat DeBlasio and taught him not to challenge Queen Eva.

FES expanded to Massachusetts and poured millions of “Dark Money” (undisclosed names) into the referendum battle to lift the cap on charter schools. After the election, the state investigated the millions in outside money that poured into the race, fined FES nearly half a million dollars for failing to identify its donors, and banned them from operating in the state for four years.

Then came the embarrassment this week when FES was compelled to fire its leader, Jeremiah Kittredge, for inappropriate sexual behavior with a non-employee. As Politico reported, Kittredge was one of the most prominent reform leaders in the nation. But he acted like a jerk, making stupid vulgar comments about a woman’s breasts at an education reform conference, the Philos retreat. Kittredge was one of Eva Moskowitz’s closest advisors.

Then today came this announcement:

**FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE** FEBRUARY 5, 2018

New York, NY – Statement from Bryan Lawrence, Board Chair of Families for Excellent Schools:

“This is a sad day for everyone at Families for Excellent Schools. We are very proud of the work we’ve done to help thousands of families stand up for educational opportunity in their communities, and believe our vision of a world where every child has access to an excellent school has never been more important.

“Unfortunately, after a series of challenges over the past year and particularly given recent events, we have determined that the support necessary to keep the organization going is not there. We are beginning the process of winding down our work. I want to thank all those who have given their heart and soul to this organization since its inception; I know they will continue to advocate for the families and communities we serve.”

Mercedes Schneider wrote about the fall of this phony group here:

Families for Excellent Schools (FES) Is Shutting Down. Marvelous.

Politico explained the declining fortunes of FES this way (and hedged on whether FES was closing partially or completely):

The pro-charter group has seen its fortunes decline sharply over the last year. Its influence in New York has waned as de Blasio has largely declined to criticize charters and much of the local press turned its attention away from Families for Excellent Schools’ relentless schedule of rallies and press releases aimed at pressuring the mayor.

By 2016, the expensive rallies the group was best known for were no longer leading to policy wins at the city or state level, and the strategy was eventually abandoned.

And most crucially, the group suffered a disastrous political defeat in late 2016 from which it never fully recovered, sources say. After funnelling $20 million into a pro-charter ballot initiative in Massachusetts known as Question 2, the question was defeated at the polls by 25 points.

Several sources indicated its once-prolific fundraising became significantly more challenging in the aftermath of the Massachusetts loss.

https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2018/02/05/families-for-excellent-schools-planning-to-close-following-ceos-firing-235707

So, the big rallies with the matching T-shirts were no longer impressing politicians. The money was drying up. The executive director was caught in an embarrassing moment of monumental grossness.

Sad. The ed reform movement seems to be cracking up. Students First, gone. FES, gone. Who is next?

ADDENDUM:

Correction by a reader:

“Jeremiah Kittredge’s behavior was not just “an embarrassing moment of monumental grossness.”

“Jeremiah Kittredge guy was a serial creep. Consensual or not, Jeremiah was basically f—ing his way through the Families for Excellent Schools headquarters:

“POLITICO: “Kittredge has been involved in multiple consensual sexual relationships with colleagues throughout his relatively brief career in education reform, including at least one employee who reported directly to him, according to five sources with direct knowledge of the situation.”

“That’s from here:

https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2018/02/02/charter-champions-firing-came-after-sexual-harassment-allegations-233549

“Jeremiah picked the wrong year(s) to be engaging in this kind of Don-Draper-in-Mad-Men type carousing. (Mad Men took place in the early to mid 1960’s) Given the current MeToo/Times Up atmosphere, his behavior was / is monumentally anachronistic.”

Categories Billionaires, Corporate Reform, Dark Money, Education Reform, Failure

Tom Ultican: Denver’s Schools Are a Dystopian Nightmare

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2018 //
29

 

Tom Ultican, retired high school teacher of advanced math and physics, has embarked on a project to review the Destroy Public Education (DPE) Movement.

His latest topic is Denver. Privatizers point to Denver as a success story, but Ultican says the schools are a “dystopian nightmare.”

Denver is a classic example of impeccably liberal Democrats collaborating to undermine and privatize public schools.

They began, as they always do, by displaying dire statistics about the “failure”of the schools. Radical action is necessary. Denver leaders began by hiring non-educator Michael Bennett as Superintendent of Schools. Bennett had worked as managing director for the investment fund of billionaire Philip Anschutz, oil and gas magnate, fracking advocate, film producer (e.g., “Waiting for Superman,” “Won’t Back Down,” “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”), and an Evangelical Christian and a funder of anti-gay activism.

“A key DPE playbook move is to leverage out of town money with local money and political muscle to purloin control of public schools. DPS schools were not dysfunctional nor were they failing. In several Denver neighborhoods, the schools were the only functional government entity.”

“Colorado launched annual state testing, which helped Bennett in his need to cry failure. He was a great believer in the “bad teacher” theory. He turned to Michelle Rhee New Teacher Project and Wendy Kopp’s TFA to import new teachers.

“Bennett enthusiastically embraced the portfolio model, treating schools like stocks: keep the winners, close the losers. No surprise: Almost all the loser schools were in poor and minority communities.

“The year that Bennet became superintendent, the heirs of the Walmart fortune opened the Charter School Growth Fund just 20 miles up highway-25 from downtown Denver. Carrie Walton Penner, sits on the board of the fund and Carrie’s husband, Greg Penner, is a director. Annie Walton Proietti, niece of Carrie, works for a KIPP school in Denver. There are other Walton family members living in and frequenting the Denver area.

“Joining the Walmart school privatizers is Bennet’s business mentor Philip Anschutz. He has a billion-dollar foundation located in Denver and owns Walden Publishing. “Walden Publishing company was “behind the anti-teachers’ union movies ‘Won’t Back Down’ and ‘Waiting for ‘Superman.’”

“These wealth powered people along with several peers promote school privatization and portfolio district management ideology.

“There is a widely held fundamental misconception that standardized testing proves something about the quality of a school. There is a belief among people than have never studied the issue that testing can be used to objectively evaluate teacher quality. It cannot! A roulette wheel would be an equally accurate instrument for measuring school and teacher quality.

“Another Non-Educator with No Training

“In 2007, Bennet asked Tom Boasberg, a childhood friend, to join DPS as his chief operating officer. Trained as a lawyer, Boasberg had worked closely as chief of staff to the chairman of Hong Kong’s first political party in the early 1990s, when the colony held its first elections in its 150 years of British rule. Before DPS, Boasberg worked for eight years at Level 3 Communications, where he was Group Vice President for Corporate Development.

“In the spring of 2008, Bennet and Boasberg were ready to tackle the pension crisis seen as sucking money out of classrooms. One month after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Boasberg and Bennet convinced the DPS board to buy a $750,000,000 complicated instrument with variable interest rates. During the melt-down of 2008 Denver’s interest rates zoomed up making this a very bad deal for DPS. (Banking was supposed to be Bennet and Boasberg’s strength.)”

So these two financial geniuses cost the school district some $25 Million on a bad bet with district funds, but no one hel them accountable. They got rid of “bad teachers,” but no one got rid of them.

Instead, Bennett was appointed to fill an empty U.S. Senate seat, and he was succeeded by his friend Tom  Boasberg. Boasberg is a “graduate”of the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy, which teaches the virtues of top-down management, closing schools, charter schools, and high-stakes testing.

Despite the usual reformer hype and boasting, test scores rose higher before Bennett started than after, yesterday reformers drooled over its “success,” which was in the eye of the beholder.

Ultican goes on to assert, with evidence, that Denver’s strategy has been ineffective and bad for kids. He shows that changing schools destabilizes neighborhoods and hurts kids; that the portfolio model is nonsense; and that inexperienced TFA teachers are not good teachers; and that running multiple school systems is more costly than running a unified system.

No miracle in Denver. Just disruption.

Categories Denver, Disruption, Failure, Rhee, Michelle, Teach for America

Gary Rubinstein: A Model of Abject Failure: The Tennessee Achievement School District

By dianeravitch
February 4, 2018 //
5

 

Gary Rubinstein has chronicled the creation, the hype, the premature claims of success, and the utter collapse of the Tennessee Achievement School District.

It was created with Race to the Top funding. It promised to take the schools ranked in the bottom 5% of the state and “catapult” them to the top 25%. This would take only five years. It would be done by turning them into charter schools.

But, five years later, Rubinstein finds, 5 of the six original schools are still in the bottom 5%, and the sixth is in the bottom 9%.

Tennessee ‘Cusp List’ 2017: 5 of 6 Of Original ASD Schools Still In Bottom 5%

This outcome could be fairly characterized as abject failure.

Unfortunately, reformers are never deterred by failure. Several other states, including Nevada, Georgia, and North Carolina have started a similar program, modeled on the Tennessee ASD.

Worse, the ASD concept is embedded in the federal Every Student Succeeds act, which directs states to develop a plan to intervene in the schools in the lowest performing 5%.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Failure, Privatization, Tennessee

Peter Greene: Why the Charter Movement is Declining

By dianeravitch
February 3, 2018 //
11

 

The original idea on the Charter Movement was noble: Teachers would create them as part of their school or district; they would seek out the most vulnerable students, the ones who had dropped out or who slept through class. They would use their freedom from the usual rules to find new ways to educate the reluctant students.

That was Albert Shanker’s vision. He sold it to his members in 1988 and kept selling it until 1993, when he announced in his weekly paid column in the New York Times that charters were no different from vouchers. He declared that business was moving into the charter industry and using it to break teachers’ unions and destroy public schools. Too late. The movement went into high gear, and the sector turned into a.m. industry, with corporate chains and for-profits, relying on inexperienced teachers and cutting costs (teacher salaries).

But suddenly, the Charter Movement has stalled. New ones still open, and old ones close, for financial or academic reasons.

Peter Greene here assesses the report from the charter-friendly Center on Reinventing Public Education. Peter has a somewhat different take than the previous post by Steven Singer.

The bottom line is the same. The charter industry literally wants free space by closing public schools. They can’t hold on to teachers, not only because of low wages, but because of poor working conditions. The teachers they attract are not in education as a career but as a stepping stone.

And two other factors hobble the growth of charters. First, most don’t keep their promises; they are not better than public schools. Second, the public reads almost daily about charters that close in mid-year, Charter founders who were convicted of theft, charter leaders using public funds as an ATM.

Peter Greene writes about the report’s “Solutions”:

“CRPE wraps up the report with some proposed solutions to the problems listed above. These are…. well, these are solutions only if you decide that the interests of charter operators are the only interests that need to be served.

“Facility shortage? Make public districts hand over more publicly owned property to charter schools, change zoning laws, and get the legislature to underwrite the funding charters need to grab real estate. And create a commission to “coordinate” the handover of public facilities to private charter operators.

“Bad competition? Create some central planning authority to coordinate the expansion strategies of charters. How that translates into anything other than telling charters where they’re allowed to expand, and how THAT translates into anything other than charter operators saying, “No, I don’t want to” is not clear. CRPE acknowledges that no charters are saying, “Please give us less autonomy.”

“Staff? Do some recruiting. From wherever.

“Limited choices? Increase a diverse supply of operators. Man. Why is it that people whose whole argument is “Free market! Free Market!” do not understand how the free market works. The free market does not give you what you wish for– it gives you what it thinks it can make money giving you. It may be cool to think, “Wow! With 500 cable channels, we could have an arts channel and a stand-up comedy channel and a channel with nothing but music videos,” but the free market does not care what you think would be cool. Well, says CRPE, we could invest heavily in the more diverse models. Who would do that, and why?

“More data? CRPE thinks more data about the charter market is needed. Who would collect that, and why?

“Toxic local politics? Maybe charter operators could negotiate some sort of deal whereby they didn’t completely suck the financial life blood out of public schools (and the schools would hand over real estate just to, you know, be cool).. Maybe they could keep trying to pack local school boards. Maybe they could convince district leaders to “think of their jobs as overseeing a broad portfolio of options with various governance models” except of course some of the items in the portfolio they “oversee” would be completely outside of their control and would be hostile and damaging to the parts of their portfolio that they are actually, legally responsible. Honestly, most of these solutions boil down to “let’s wish real hard that public school people will just like us more because it’s inconvenient for us when they don’t.”

“Bottom line

“I’m happy to see the modern charter tide ebbing. And I’m not sad to see that folks like CRPE and the interviewees don’t really have a handle on why it’s happening. I agree that it doesn’t have to be this way, but it will be this way as long as modern charter boosters fail to acknowledge their major systemic issues, insist on inadequate funding in a zero-sum system, disenfranchise the public, underperform in educating students, and behave as businesses rather than schools. As I said above, time is not on their side, and neither is their inability to grasp the problems they create for public education in this country.”

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