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Peter Greene: Ohio Charter School Closes Mid-Year, Without Warning

By dianeravitch
November 9, 2017 //
5

Peter Greene writes here about a charter school in Ohio that closed mid-year. The decision was made, the school closed, at least one student didn’t get the news and showed up to find that her school was gone.

Occurrences like this send a message to Ohio parents about charter schools. They come and go. That may be a reason charter enrollment in charters is declining in Ohio.

Greene writes:

“One of the things that you get with a pubic school that you do not get with a charter schools is a promise, a long term commitment to stay in place and keep your doors open. Folks in the Mahoning Valley (near Youngstown, Ohio and Sharon, Pennsylvania) were reminded of that as yet another charter school closed its doors with the year well under way.”

The school was opened to help students in academic distress, but things were going badly. So the school closed.

“The stated reason was money. It no longer made business sense to keep MVOC open, and since charter schools are ultimately businesses, it is business-based decisions that rule the day. Not student based, not community based, and not education based. Charter schools are businesses, and businesses close when it suits them. Food trucks do not factor in how badly the community needs a place to eat– only whether they can profit by serving that community. One more reason that modern charters are a bad fit for education.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Education Industry, Failure

Michigan: Legislators Blame Plummeting Test Scores on State Board, Not Failed DeVos Choice Policies

By dianeravitch
November 4, 2017 //
8

This is actually a very funny article in The 74, the unofficial voice of the privatization, union-busting movement.

The Republicans in the state legislature want to abolish the State Board of Education (which they don’t control) because of the state’s plummeting test scores.

The legislators do not consider that the state’s total embrace of choice without accountability (the DeVos plan) might be responsible for the state’s decline.

That would require some thought and reflection, which is in short supply in Lansing.

In a move to radically upend Michigan’s governance over schools, Republican lawmakers are seeking to eliminate the elected state board of education. While many believe it’s unlikely the legislation will pass, both its authors and detractors agree that some action is necessary to arrest an alarming decline in local academic performance.

The proposal is spearheaded by state Rep. Tim Kelly, chairman of the House Education Reform Committee and a longtime critic of the state board. He led a similar effort last year in response to its guidance on the needs of transgender students, accusing members of “practicing social engineering with every progressive agenda that comes down the pike.”

That push attracted dozens of cosponsors but ultimately fell short. Abolishing the board would require a constitutional amendment passed by two-thirds of both the state House and Senate, followed by public approval of a ballot measure in the next election. Kelly, recently nominated by President Donald Trump to serve as assistant education secretary under fellow Michigander Betsy DeVos, has assailed the board as a superfluous institution muddling the question of exactly who has jurisdiction over Michigan schools.”

The elimination of districts and the promotion of choice and charters has coincided with a dramatic drop in the state’s performance on the federally-funded National Assessment of Educational Progress.

In 2015, Michigan ranked 41st and 42nd in the country, respectively, for fourth-grade reading and math on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often referred to as the Nation’s Report Card — down from 28th and 27th in 2003. It experienced more modest drops in both eighth-grade reading and math as well, fanning worries of a comprehensive downturn in school quality throughout the state.

Michigan is witnessing systemic decline across the K-12 spectrum,” read a 2016 report from The Education Trust-Midwest. “White, black, brown, higher-income, low-income — it doesn’t matter who they are or where they live, Michigan students’ achievement levels in early reading and middle school math are not keeping up with the rest of the U.S., much less our international competitors.”

Some local observers have laid blame for the poor results at the feet of school choice advocates, most notably U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. After the widespread expansion of charter schools and open enrollment across school districts, the quality of Michigan schools is no better than it was two decades ago, and arguably a good deal worse. Analysis from Phil Power’s Center for Michigan has found that close to one-third of Michigan charters occupy the state’s bottom quarter of academic performance. About one-quarter of traditional district schools were grouped in that category.

I wonder what Betsy would say? My guess is that she would respond that Michigan needs vouchers, which voters overwhelmingly rejected in a state referendum in 2000. Betsy and her husband Dick DeVos sponsored the referendum. Then Michigan could have three low-performing sectors, not just two.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Failure, Michigan, School Choice, Vouchers

Sad! High-Tech, For-Profit AltSchool is Closing Down Two of Its Schools!

By dianeravitch
November 4, 2017 //
8

Business Insider reports that the latest new thing, AltSchool, is not making it.

Backed by Mark Zuckerberg and tech entrepreneur-Trump acolyte Peter Thiel, started by a former Google executive, AltSchool was lauded lavishly when it opened. It was supposed to revolutionize education.

AltSchool, an educational software developer and network of “micro-schools” with four locations in California and New York, is shuttering another outpost.

The startup’s schoolhouse in Manhattan’s East Village will close its doors at the end of the academic year, according to an email obtained by Business Insider from vice president of schools at AltSchool, Sam Franklin, to parents of AltSchool students on Thursday night.

It’s the second closure that AltSchool has announced in two days, after the buzzy ed-tech startup revealed it’s closing its location in Silicon Valley. AltSchool appears to be refocusing its energy on licensing its educational software to existing schools, rather than creating new ones.

In an email to parents, Franklin apologized to parents who may have learned about the school closures “in the news rather than hearing it from us.”

AltSchool counted the Oxycontin billionaire family, the Sacklers, among its investors. Also Laurene Powell Jobs. All the really smart and very rich folks.

Sad. Very sad. Just a tax write-off.

Categories Education Reform, Failure, For-Profit, Technology

Nevada: The Copy-Cat “Achievement School District” Is Failing

By dianeravitch
November 1, 2017 //
8

Angie Sullivan teaches young children in the public schools of Clark County (Las Vegas), Nevada. Her school is a Title I School. She often excoriates the legislature for ignoring the needs of the state’s neediest children. In this post, which she sent to legislators and journalists, she reminds them that Nevada’s charter schools are among the lowest performing schools in the state, and that their so-called Achievement School District, modeled on the ASD that failed in Tennessee, is also a massive failure.

The Nevada ASD

The Achievement School District is the biggest reform failure in the state of Nevada.

Built on the flawed premise that charters are a remedy for failing public schools, the ASD forces 6 failing public schools into charters. Unfortunately, the worst academic performers in Nevada are charters. Charters are not a remedy. There are zero excellent charters in Nevada. And certainly zero excellent charters in places needing remedy in Nevada.

This is a description of Nevada ASD.

http://www.doe.nv.gov/News__Media/Press_Releases/2016a/Nevada_Achievement_School_District_Eligibility_List_Submitted_to_State_Board_of_Education/

When implemented, no one wanted the ASD job. Certainly no one in the Nevada community wanted the task.

Eventually a young woman Jana Wilcox Lavin with a background in public relations and marketing was imported from the failed Tennessee ASD model to form the new Nevada ASD.

Jana immediately announced she did not want to “takeover” an older school facility. Her primary concern was plumbing. Seems that her “takeover” in Tennessee had issues with pipes she did not want to deal with again. Also charter vendors are not attracted to rural communities. And charter takeover of a failing charter was not an option. Proving ASD charters were not a remedy for student achievement but a business function since they do not go where a remedy for student achievement is needed the most.

Jana has moved on and is now at Opportunity 180. That organization had $10 million (including funds from Eli Broad) under former Nevada State School Board Member Allison Serafin to bring non-profit charters to Nevada. Opportunity 180 also failed.

Due to low per pupil funding, ASD and Opportunity 180 did not attract any quality charter vendors. It certainly did not attract quality vendors with education experience dealing with high poverty and high language learning populations.

Some scary vendors were chosen – later to be excluded.

As mentioned before, the selection process for the ASD was unfair with schools being “chosen” in urban Vegas because the facilities were new. I believe the ASD thought minority parents would be easily swayed to become a charter. They were wrong.

The underperforming list was very telling. Half the list were rural schools and charters. Many listed were immediately disqualified because they were already charters. Outside charter vendors had zero appetite for rural school takeover. No one had an appetite for rural school takeover. Again proving the ASD is not a function of doing what is best for all Nevada students.

The ASD moved to force the six charter vendors on minority communities in Vegas.

Low Performing Vegas schools were the victims. While a very small handful of parents welcomed becoming a charter, overwhelmingly the community came out by the thousands rejecting “takeover”. The community is tired of failed experimentation on communities of color by outsiders. Decades of invasion has taught our parents to be highly skeptical and critical of crazy ideas imposed by top-down policy makers who do not know or care about our kids.

The ASD ended up taking in the Agassi Charters and a very tiny four teacher Futuro started by Allison Serafin’s TFA friends. Some schools ended up with a “compact” since there was no one willing to take them over.

During the last legislative session, correction of this failed reform was attempted. Unfortunately the revised legislation may have been worse than the current version with teacher voice squelched and parent trigger like language. The correction was about forcing charters with even stronger language. Hard to explain the poison pills the NVDOE wanted to place in the revision but they were nasty. While some pieces of the new legislation were better; other pieces were worse. Unfortunate maneuvering by the NVDOE and the ASD. Taught me a lot about the individuals at the NVDOE and how little they know about my community.

We needed to change the ASD legislation but the poison was too hard to swallow.

We are stuck with a system which parents already rejected.

This years underperforming list looks to be similar to last years list. The lowest of the low performers are obviously charter schools and rural schools once again.

https://www.scribd.com/mobile/document/362048046/Nevada-s-2017-Rising-Stars-Schools?skip_app_promo=true

Elementary Schools

CCSD Bottom 5% – 12 Schools (5%)
CCSD Low Performing – 14 Schools (6%)
CCSD has 216 elementary schools. (11%)

Washoe Bottom 5% – 3 Schools (5%)
Washoe Low Performing – 5 Schools (8%)
WCSD has 60 elementary schools (13%)

Rural Bottom 5% – 3 Schools
Rural Low Performing- 8 Schools
** 100% of schools in most places are failing – since often only a singular choice is offered**

Charter Bottom 5% – 1 Schools (4%)
Charter Low Performing – 4 Schools (17%)
24 charters – (21%)

Middle Schools

CCSD Bottom 5% – 2 schools (3%)
CCSD Low Performing – 6 schools (10%)
CCSD has 59 middle schools. (13%)

Washoe Low Performing – 2 schools (13%)
WCSD has 15 middle schools (13%)

Rural Bottom 5% – 5 schools
Rural Low Performing – 4 schools
** 100% of schools in most places are failing – since often only a singular choice is offered**

High Schools

CCSD – 4 schools
CCSD has 49 high schools. (8%)

Rural – 5 schools
** 100% of schools in most places are failing – since often only a singular choice is offered**

Charters – 8 schools (67%)
24 charters – 12 having high schools

Nevada has 24 charters. 11 are on the list. 46% of charters are performing lowest of the low. Mater (Academica) , NV Connections, Nevada Virtual, Quest, Delta Academy, Innovations, Odyssey, Beacon, Encompass, Silver State, and I Can Do Anything.

Elko County has nine schools. 7 are on the list. 78% of its schools.

Places like McDermitt which serves primarily Native Americans – 100% of its schools are on the list for elementary and high school.

Unfortunately the list still includes schools which are obviously credit retrieval and alternative programs. This should be fixed instead of continuing to list obvious programs already identified as specialized.

Alternative Schools
CCSD Burk
CCSD Desert Rose
Nye Pathways

In summary:

If ASD is really about improving student achievement and not a Vegas school grab – it will look at the data.

Reform rural schools first since there is zero other school choice in those locations. Some places have the most obvious and overwhelming need. Start in Elko and McDermitt. ASD should focus on places with 100% of schools failing – which are most of the rural schools listed and a third of the list.

In addition, all schools listed should be allowed to make a compact instead of charter takeover if targeted. This was allowed last year and set a precedent.

If CCSD schools are the only schools targeted again for takeover – it will be obvious to everyone this is unfair according to the data. Also, Vegas offers choice by magnet, zone variance, and location. Parents can move students because we have 351 schools not a singular choice.

Charters under scrutiny by the State Public Charter Authority, in receivership, or under investigation should not be allowed to “escape” by opting in to the ASD. That would include all of them on the low performing lists. Nevada Charters have avoided accountability for too long. They need to be closed if they are failing.

Personal note: Also listed are many schools with ZOOM, Victory, SB178 money. This shows that money is obviously required and the Vegas schools labeled Low Performing are filled with students experiencing high poverty and language learners. Since this funding was recently legislated, especially the weighted funding, those places should be left alone to see if those funds can work.

I will be watching ASD closely to make sure it makes it choices based on student achievement . . . and not nice real estate or extra money.

Forcing a charter on minority communities is not school choice.

And that is why Nevada ASD is a huge policy failure.

Angie.

Categories Charter Schools, Failure, Fraud, Nevada, Tennessee

Phil Cullen: New Zealand Leads the World!

By dianeravitch
October 27, 2017 //
24

Phil Cullen of Australia is a zealous critic of his nation’s national testing and accountability regime.

He wrote about this important news from New Zealand, whose new government has decided to abandon the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM).

He wrote:

“New Zealand leads the world.

“New Zealand leads the way down under and maybe across the world in caring about kids.

“Its determination to return to sanity, humanity, progress, initiative and competence for its schooling system, which itself determines national progress in the long run, is now being unpacked and, I am told that the new coalition government contains a few former teachers and school-active parents around as heavyweights who can talk school and lead the conversion for a better world down under.

“There’s dynamic Tracey Martin, former School Board chair; Kelvin Davis, highly respected former principal and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party; and Winston Peters of NZ First and, Deputy PM who trained as a teacher. In Australia we only have legal eagles.

“Parent groups in NZ are claiming that now, teaching will be returned to the teaching profession and democracy will be returned to schooling in New Zealand soon. The isles are shaking with joy for kids.

“It’s a country that has always been to the forefront of school improvement but then, the take-over by the irrational managerialists and corporate heavy-weights circa 1990, and the addition of GERM in 2008, has had a detrimental impact that has lasted for a decade. They’ve had enough, now. We still tolerate it to our shame and academic deterioration.

“How come New Zealand leads the world now in the decontamination of the establishment’s unworthy, useless, immoral, unethical, unprofessional testucation procedures in schools? Well, there’s been a number of factors.

“Fortunately, during this period, it has had its crusaders for kids who just don’t give in too easily. It’s been a long and arduous battle, of the kind that must continue next door, in Australia.

“There’s Kelvin Smythe, former Chief Inspector and Allan Allach, energetic, thoughtful former primary school principal, reader and writer and Bruce Hammonds, former principal, consultant and writer – a valiant trio that has been unafraid to have their say. They set the pace.

“There’s Chris Hipkins, in particular, who has been the shadow Minister for Education whose inspirational speeches and talks have been based on a sound knowledge of schooling and who has been unequivocal in his aim to rid the country of testucation and de facto schooling.

“There’s the Primary Principals’ Association which kept its administrative distance from the government testucrats and compliant GERMans, never properly complying .

“While “The Government will never listen and nothing will change and we are just one little country.” Some timorous principals said, there were others of the association, especially the leader of the organisation, Whetu Cormick, described as “The greatest teacher organisation leader of our time,:” by Kelvin Smythe. We didn’t hold back, “At the other extreme are those like me,” he said “who will continue to fight to the end. We know that National Standards and all the ‘reforms’ that go with them are bad for our young people. Our young people have faith in us to protect their futures by continuing to fight for the best education that our young people deserve.” Looking directly into the face of Nikki Kay, the then Minister, he said, “Let’s wait no longer to get our young people on the road to success. Let’s put up a big STOP NATIONAL STANDARDS.” The organsation has always been fearless…

Click to access opinion_piece_nzpf_presidents_column_on_ns_may_31_2011_.pdf

“There’s Diane Kahn and the Save Our Schools organisation whose prime target has always been the elimination of ‘national standards’ and was heavy and constant with dynamic opposition. [ https://saveourschoolsnz.com/ ]

“There’s an influential Kiwi sciolist [aka schooliolist – one who pretends to be well informed about schooling] and academic testucator who played a significant role in the introduction of testucation into NZ…..who left the country at the right time.

___________________________________________
“There are some messages for Australia. In world schooling terms, it is the boondocks of failed political schooling, the backward West Island of learning progress, the most over-tested country in the world.

“A political party needs to think. Does it believe in providing the best schooling possible, or doesn’t it give a damn as Aussie political parties do?

“Listening to schooliolist academic know-alls, qualified testucators, loud-mouth politicians, corporate unions [like IPA, BCA and Farmers] inhabited by conservative capitalists, neo-libs and delcons, which still rule the roost on the west side of the ditch, continues to lead Australian schooling in the wrong direction. New Zealand has now told these cocky roosters what to do with their distasteful attitude to children.

“Australian schools are in dire need of some Finnish-ing tactics.” said Wendy Knight in The Age….and we can now add: ‘and some Kiwi tactics’. What really happens in a good school system? Why don’t we look around and learn?
An example of off-the-hip, loud-mouth political interference is contained in suggestions made in Treasurer Morrison’s Shifting the Dial, another imported kind of measurement.

“It presumes that the hiring of skilled subject specialists like mathematicians will improve standards in schools. It overlooks the reality that real teachers teach real pupils….real people! The secret is in the interaction. They teach them about mathematics, to like mathematics. They don’t get up in front of a class and pontificate about what they themselves know. Effective teachers of anything operate from the learner’s level. Socrates was a better teacher of Maths than Einstein and a better teacher of literature than Shakespeare. His pupils learned how to learn.

“A strong and outspoken principals’ association can be truly influential as they are in NZ. Protection of children and their future as well as the provision of a rich holistic curriculum, undaunted by fearful interruptions to positive learning, should dominate the spirit of every principal’s personal professional code. Laxity, timidity, compliance and silence have no place in their organisations when the chips are down for kids….as they are now in Australia.

“It’s looking more evident every day that the lower half of the existing Lib-Lab delcon group viz. Labor under Shorten, will be the government after the next federal election in Australia. The lib-lab neo-con conventions will probably continue as they did in the passing of klein deforms from Labor to Liberal. Neither political group, Labor nor Liberal, ever expresses any thoughts about the continuance of the Klein system of schooling, now almost a decade old ; and which should go because it is proving useless.

“Neither party knows much about schooling and hides its ignorance by talking only Gonksi and funding and teacher quality. For them, the plight of children lies in the dollar sign, not in compassion and humanity and learning and in experience and excellence. Each remains ultra-complacent by making do, making silly schooling decisions, maintaining the mediocre, and supporting private schools before helping public schools.{Remember DOGS – Defence of Government Schools?} A country that treats its children the way that Australia does, is in for big trouble….really big trouble.

“It just won’t be able to handled itself in world affairs.

“It relies on the cockeyed Gillard Theory of Testucation, using Kleinism to control operatives and operations, to no end except to gather data; then ignores the basic laws of administrative order and effectiveness [Campbell, Goodhart, Lucas and Common Sense] and treats the electorate as if everyone is a dill or doesn’t care what happens to kids. The present government will go while it maintains these attitudes to schooling and doesn’t have the capacity to think. The Labor Party will replace it and not do any better. Both need to think seriously about schooling…very, very seriously.

ooo000ooo

“I’m deliberately apolitical and have voted informal at the last few federal elections because I’ve been offered only lower-order policies in general and crazy views about schooling. …nothing that really suggests that there is a healthy future for this wonderful country. Schooling is the most important issue of this century for Aussie citizens. If it is not rejuvenated, Australia has some big problems coming up. I’ll vote for any party -Pauline’s, Bob’s, Nick’s, Jacqui’s, anybody who says that it will get rid of NAPLAN.

“I’ll know by its standard of advocacy that such a party likes kids, that it is thinking and will do something about our future. Our present klein system relies on child abuse.

“I’ll study the detail of course, but no party can be so blithely ignorant of schooling as our major parties are at present. Their mentors can only bark Gonski, data, scores, testing, funding, teacher quality with schooliolist pedantry and no regard for the real spirit of learning at school.

“Seriously – rejuvenation of schooling from the mess of mass testucation will be very difficult. Unscrambling an egg always is. Since New Zealand will have to do the job before Australia wakes up, it might be wise to locate some observers there to learn how to go about it.

“We need to do what New Zealand has done :

“DECLARE OURSELVES

“It’s rejuvenation time down under!

“THANKS NEW ZEALAND”

Categories Accountability, Failure, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International, Testing

Karen Wolfe: Why Did DeVos Give Millions to Low-Performing Rocketship Charters?

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2017 //
35

Karen Wolfe is baffled: why did Betsy DeVos just give $12.6 million to Rocketship charter chain, which has a dismal record? Rocketship puts poor kids in front of computers and employs teacher aides to save money.

“Silicon Valley-based Rocketship is a charter school chain with a bevy of star backers that’s reported sky-high student achievement and recently landed a $12.6 million grant from Betsy DeVos’ Department of Education. But beyond the hype is a galaxy of problems, including plummeting test scores, litigation and allegations of student mistreatment.

Co-founded by the brain behind Yahoo’s first advertising platform, John Danner and Teach For America alum, Preston Smith, Rocketship has attracted the support of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists whose fortunes were made disrupting industries with tech: Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and early Apple investor Arthur Rock, among others.

“Rocketship has grown over the last decade into a network of thirteen schools around the country, serving nearly 8,000 kindergarten through fifth-grade students who are overwhelmingly poor and Latino. The venture proclaims it is “dedicated to eliminating the achievement gap” with a business model which, Education Week explains, “replace[s] one credentialed teacher per grade with software and an hourly-wage aide, freeing up $500,000 yearly per school.”

“Rocketship’s initial results were promising. But the charter chain’s sky-high student outcomes have not held up: A 2014 analysis by the California Department of Education found that in the previous five years the number of Rocketship students scoring at the “proficient” level or above on California state tests fell by 30 percentage points in English and 14 percentage points in math…

“For years education activists and district officials have been raising alarms about Rocketship’s negative effect on student well-being. Students just five to ten years old sit in front of computers for 80 to100 minutes per day. The schools track, to the minute, the time that each elementary school child spends online, and their percentage of “goals” reached. That screen time is so valued by Rocketship that there’s almost no time for art or play. Students are even discouraged from taking bathroom breaks. One former teacher told NPR, “I’ve never had second-graders pee their pants except for at Rocketship.”

“A family physician in Santa Clara County with patients in Rocketship schools wrote the school board a letter noting a pattern of urinary tract infections and extreme stress.

“Parents and former employees have also raised concerns about safety due to a student to teacher ratio around thirty-seven to one, and about the school’s extreme no-talking policy called “Zone Zero” they claim “amounted to hours of enforced silence.”

Why? Replicating failing charters is not good for children, but it helps advance the DeVos agenda of privatization and union-busting.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Privatization

Laura Chapman on Bill Gates’ Hubris, Ignorance, and Folly

By dianeravitch
October 22, 2017 //
54

A couple of days ago, Bill Gates said he has a new plan to reform education. As I pointed out in a post, Bill Gates is batting 0 for 3. He dropped $2 Billion into breaking up large high schools and turning them into small schools. He started in 2000, didn’t see a big jump in test scores, and backed out in 2008. Then, having decided that the answer to high test scores was to punish teachers whose student scores didn’t go up, he pushed value-added Assessment, partnering with Arne Duncan and Race to the Top. Thousands of educators were fired and many schools were closed based on Gates’s fancy. That lasted from 2008 until now, and it has been written into state law in many states, although it has distorted the purpose of education and created massive demoralization among teachers and a national teacher shortage. Then he funded the Common Core, in its entirety. It is his pedagogical Frankenstein, his personal belief that education should be completely standardized, from standards to curriculum to teacher education to teacher evaluation. Speaking to the National Board for Certified Teachers a few years ago, he praised standardization and talked about the beauty of standard electrical plugs. No matter where you live, you can plug in an appliance and it works! Clearly, that was his metaphor for education. What did he spend on the creation and promotion of the Common Core? No one knows for sure, but estimates range from $200 Million to $2 Billion.

There is one other massive Gates failure that I forgot to mention: inBloom. This was a $100million investment in data mining of students’ personally identifiable data. Several states and districts agreed to turn their data over to inBloom, which wipould use the data as its owners chose. Parents got wind of this and launched a campaign to stop in loom. Led by Leonie Haimson of New York and Rachel Stickland of Colorado, parents besieged their legislators, and one by one, the state’s and districts pulled out. InBloom collapsed.

We don’t know how much money Gates has poured into charter schools, but we imagine he must be disappointed that on average they don’t produce higher scores than the public schools he disdains. He bundled millions for a referendum in Washington State to allow charter schools, the fourth such referendum. Despite Gates’ swamping the election with money, the motion barely passed. Then the State’s highest court denied public funding to charter schools, declaring that they are not public schools because they are not governed by elected school boards. Gates and his friends tried to oust the Chief Judge when she ran for re-election, but she coasted to victory.

As you see, he is actually 0 for 5 in his determination to “reform” the nation’s public schools.

But he is not deterred by failure!

So what is the latest Gates’ idea?

Laura Chapman explains here:

“At the Meeting of the Council for Great City Schools October 19, 2017, Gates said:

“Today, I’d like to share what we have learned over the last 17 years and how those insights will change what we focus on over the next five years.”

“I think that Gates has learned very little about education in the last 17 years. He is still fixated on “the lagging performance” of our students on what he regards as “the key metrics of a quality education – math scores, English scores, international comparisons, and college completion.

“Gates wants his narrow definition of “quality education” to be accepted as if the proper doctrine for improving schools and also ensuring the “economic future and competitiveness of the United States.”

“Gates wants faster progress in raising test scores, and high school graduation rates. He seems to think that “constraints and other demands on state and local budget” actually justify his plans to “ increase high school graduation and college-readiness rates.”

“Gates takes credit for funding for the deeply flawed + Measures of Effective Teaching project (MET), claiming that it showed educators ”how to gather feedback from students on their engagement and classroom learning experiences . . . and about observing teachers at their craft, assessing their performance fairly, and providing actionable feedback.” The $64 million project in 2007 tried to make it legitimate for teachers to be judged by “multiple measures” including the discredited VAM, and dubious Danielson teacher observation protocol http://nepc.colorado.edu/newsletter/2013/01/review-MET-final-2013 Gates learned nothing from that micromanaging effort.

“Gates funded and promoted the Common Core. He says: “Teachers need better curricula and professional development aligned with the Common Core.”He remains committed to the ideas that “teacher evaluations and ratings” are useful ways “to improve instruction,” He thinks “data-driven continuous learning and evidence-based interventions,” will improve student achievement. This jargon is meaningless.

“Gates said: Overall, we expect to invest close to $1.7 billion in US public education over the next five years.“…“We anticipate that about 60 percent of this will eventually support the development of new curricula and networks of schools that work together to identify local problems and solutions . . . and use data to drive continuous improvement.

“Don’t be deceived by the “public education” comment. Gates wants to control public schools by dismantling their governance by and for the public. By “networks of schools” Gates means “innovation districts” where persons employed by private interests can control educational policy under the banner of “collaboration” or “partnership.”

“Gates offers several examples of networks. One is CORE, a so-called “partnership” of eight large urban school districts in California: Fresno, Garden Grove, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco and Santa Ana,

“CORE stands for “California Office for Reform in Education CORE a non-governmental organization, based in San Francisco, funded by the Stuart Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation (Stephen Bechtel Fund); and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Here are some other things you should know about CORE.

“CORE was created in order to bypass the California State Board of Education and Race to the Top accountability, by marketing its new “School Quality Improvement Index.” This index includes social-emotional learning and school climate indicators in addition to California requirements—test scores, graduation rates, and the like.
Participating CORE Districts are bound to the terms of a memorandum of understanding, signed only by each district superintendent. This MOU specifies that the district will use: CORE-approved school improvement ratings based on existing and new indicators, a CORE-approved teacher and principal evaluation process with professional development plans, CORE-specific teacher and principal hiring and retention policies with cross-district sharing data—including results from teacher/student/parent surveys of school climate and student self-assessments of their social-emotional skills.

“The final rating for each school in a CORE district is a complex web of weightings and transformations of scores into performance and growth measures: 40% of the overall rating for school climate/social emotional indicators and 60% for academics.

“An autonomous “School Quality Oversight Panel” nullifies oversight of these districts by the State Board of Education. This “oversight” panel has CORE supporters recruited from The Association of California School Administrators, and California School Boards Association, California State PTA. The main monitors/promoters of this scheme are actually two panel members: Ed Trust West and the Policy Analysis for California Education. Bot of these organizations are sustained in large measure by private funding.

“Ed Trust West is funded by the Bloomberg Philanthropies, State Farm Companies, and these foundations: Bill & Melinda Gates, Joyce, Kresge, Lumina, Wallace Foundation, and the Walton Family. The Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) is based at Stanford University, with participation by the University of California – Berkeley, and the University of Southern California. PACE is a conduit for grants from USDE and from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation; Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund; S. D. Bechtel Jr. Foundation; Walter and Elise Haas Fund; and The Walter S. Johnson Foundation.

“School ratings developed by the CORE Districts flow directly to GreatSchools.org —a marketing site for schools and education products. GreatSchools.org is funded by the Gates, Walton, Robertson, and Arnold Foundations. Add the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, the Bradley Foundation, Goldman Sachs Gives, New Schools Venture Fund. and 15 other foundations.“GreatSchools.org in a non-profit in name only. GreatSchools.org sells data from all states and districts. For a fee, it will push users of the website to particular schools. Buyers of the data include Zillow and Scholastic.

“I think that the CORE District model illustrates how the private takeover of education is happening. Policy formation and favored school practices are being determined by the wealth and the peculiar visions non governmental groups with deep pockets. In the CORE Districts, this work is aided and abetted by superintendents who are eager for the money and the illusion of prestige that comes from permitting private funders to determine educational policies and practices.

“Gates’ speech to members of the Council of the Great City Schools also includes the example of Tennessee’s LIFT Education as a “network” that is worth replicating.

“LIFT Education enlists educators from 12 rural and urban districts across the state to promote the Common Core agenda and Teach for America practices. Participants in LIFT Education are convened by the State Collaborative on Reforming Education —SCORE. The SCORE website says participants in LIFT have spent the last year and a half collaborating on high-quality early literacy instruction, focusing on building knowledge and vocabulary by piloting knowledge-rich read-alouds in early grades.

“The LIFT/SCORE alliance provides a governance structure for insisting that teachers follow the Gates-funded Common Core. Teachers are given an instructional practice guide that is also a teacher evaluation rubric from Student Achievement Partner, authors of the Common Core. https://lifteducationtn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/LIFT-Instructional-Practice-Guide-K-5-Literacy.pdf

“This LIFT/SCORE non-governmental network is the result of private wealth channeled to superintendents who have outsourced the “coaching” and compliance monitoring for the Common Core literacy project to the Brooklyn-based The New Teachers Project (TNTP). In effect, TFA coaching and systems of data-gathering are present in all of the LIFT/SCORE districts.

“SCORE, the State Collaborative on Reforming Education has been funded since 2010 by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, so far $10,623,497 including multiple years for operating support. Add a 2012 grant to SCORE as sponsor of a Chiefs for Change Policy Forum for district leaders so they would be “ambassadors for education reform.” The bait for the LIFT/SCORE network thus came from Chiefs for Change–Jeb Bush’s baby, unfriendly to public education.

“Gates says: “Over the next several years, we will support about 30 of these networks (e.g.., CORE, LIFT) and will start initially with high needs schools and districts in 6 to 8 states. Each network will be backed by a team of education experts skilled in continuous improvement, coaching, and data collection and analysis.””

“Our goal is to work with the field to ensure that five years from now, teachers at every grade level in secondary schools have access to high-quality, aligned curriculum choices in English and math, as well as science curricula based on the Next Generation Science Standards.”

“What else is in the works from the many who would be king of American education?

“We expect that about 25 percent of our funding in the next five years will focus on big bets – innovations with the potential to change the trajectory of public education over the next 10 to 15 years.” What does Gates means by “big bets?” He expects to command the expertise and R&D to change the “trajectory” of education. He will fund translations of “developments in neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and behavioral economics” in addition to “technology-enabled” approaches in education.

“There is money left for more.

“We anticipate that the final 15 percent of our funding in the next five years will go to the charter sector. We will continue to help high-performing charters expand to serve more students. But our emphasis will be on efforts that improve outcomes for special needs students — especially kids with mild-to-moderate learning and behavioral disabilities.”

“This proposal sounds like Gates wants to cherry pick the students with “mild to moderate learning and behavioral disabilities,” send them to Gates-funded charter schools to bring their scores up, then claim success where everyone else has failed. This same strategy is being used in “pay-for performance” preschools. Gates sounds like he expects to have a free-hand in ignoring the Individual with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Evidently he wants the “flexibility” to ignore IDEA that he believes to be present in charter schools.

“Bill Gates is still fixated on the idea that his money and clout can and will attract other foundations and private investors. He still holds on to the mistaken idea that “what works” in one community or state can be “scaled up,” and REPLICATED, elsewhere. He is ignorant of the history of education and efforts to replicate programs. He is trapped in an industrial one-size-fits-all model of education.

“Gates ends with this: “Our role is to serve as a catalyst of good ideas, driven by the same guiding principle we started with: all students – but especially low-income students and students of color – must have equal access to a great public education that prepares them for adulthood. We will not stop until this has been achieved, and we look forward to continued partnership with you in this work in the years to come.”

“Beware of billionaires who want to partner with you.

“Gates still seems to think that students, especially low income students, can and will be successful if they have “ equal access to a great public education.” He remains ignorant of the abundant research that shows schools alone are not responsible for, or solutions to, institutionalized segregation and poverty–the main causes of serious disadvantage among low-income students and students of color.

“Gates has grandiose plans. All are focused on privatizing education and selling that snake oil as if it is authentic support for public education.“

Categories Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Data and Data Mining, Failure, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, John King, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, VAM (value-added modeling)

Newark: Charter School Begins to Close Down Less Than Two Months After Opening

By dianeravitch
October 20, 2017 //
22

On August 28, 2017, Governor Chris Christie proudly cut the ribbon with an over-sized scissors to mark the opening of the M.E.T.S. Charter School in Newark. He told the students that they would get every opportunity to succeed, and now it was up to them to decide how hard they wanted to work in school.

During Christie’s two terms in office, he has doubled the number of charter schools to 89.

Well, change that to 88.

Mercedes Schneider reports that the brand new charter school, not even two months old, has announced its plans to close by the end of the school year. Starting immediately, it is sending its students in 9th and 10th grades back to the much-maligned Newark Public Schools.

She writes:

“On October 19, 2017, M.E.T.S. sent the parents of its 9th and 10th graders this “special message” that their so-called school-choice “empowerment” was being immediately overridden by the vague determination of M.E.T.S. to immediately send all 9th and 10th graders back to the Newark Public Schools.

Of course, this profound, “special announcement” jolt– delivered by an “interim lead administrator”– is being framed as responsible, caring, and smooth.”

Then follows the text of the “special announcement.”

A story on a New Jersey website provides a few horrifying details about the shabby treatment of the children of Newark, bounced from one charter to another by “reformers:”

“Almost half of the students at the charter school have already been displaced once.

“District officials said 110 of the 140 students in grades 10-12 came from three closed charter schools — Newark Prep Charter School, Paulo Freire Charter School or Merit Prep Charter School — which were shut down by the state last school year for academic problems.“

Hey, Mark Zuckerberg, is this what your $100 million paid for? Constant disruption of children’s lives.

Categories Charter Schools, Failure, New Jersey, Newark

Gary Rubinstein: The Collapse Of Tennessee’s Achievement School District

By dianeravitch
October 20, 2017 //
22

Gary Rubinstein has been tracking the progress—and the hubris—of the Tennessee Achievement School District. The ASD was created with millions drawn from Tennessee’s $500 Million Race to the Top Grant, the first in the nation. The basic idea was that the ASD would create a special district for the state’s lowest performing schools, turn them over to charter operators, and within precisely five years, these schools would be “catapulted”into the top 25% of the schools in the state.

The first cohort of six schools were in the bottom 5% of schools in the state.

“Two years into the five-year mission, the superintendent at the time, TFA alum Chris Barbic, declared in an interview that of the original six schools, two were on target to get to the top 25% in five years while one of the six schools, Brick Church Elementary, was on a trajectory to reach the goal after just four years.

“Three years into the five-year mission, the improvements that he had based these projections on did not continue and Barbic was saying that they underestimated how difficult this would be, even admitting that the ‘immigrant poverty’ he worked with as a charter school founder in Houston is very different than the ‘generational poverty’ he works with in Tennessee.

“Four years into the five-year mission, Barbic resigned from the ASD, citing among other things, his health as he had recently had a heart attack. He soon got hired by the John Arnold foundation to work on education issues for them.”

In the fifth year, the state testing system was messed up by technical glitches, so there were no scores. So the ASD got six years to work its magic.

Now the scores are out, Gary analyzed the results, and one thing is clear: the ASD was an abysmal failure.

Of the original 6 ASD schools, one is in the bottom 7%, the rest are still in the bottom 5% with two of them in the bottom 1%.

This is what is called a total and complete failure. It was not “for the kids.” It was for the ego-gratification of arrogant deformers.

Gary writes:

“There are actually other states considering starting their own ASDs, I just read that Mississippi is working on it. Georgia, North Carolina and Nevada already have them in the works. There was one in Michigan which folded and there is still the original one in New Orleans which continues to post awful test results.”

Most of the ASD schools were in Memphis. Jeannie Kaplan reported earlier today that author David Osborne was in Denver touting Memphis as a reform Success. Six out of six of the state’s lowest performing schools are still the state’s lowest performing schools. If this is success, what does failure look like?

The definition of a reformer today: Never look at evidence, never admit failure, never learn anything new, just keep pushing privatization, lower standards for teachers, and high-stakes testing. Fail, fail, fail, and do it again.

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

Washington Post Calls on Democratic Candidate for Governor in Virginia to Stick with Failed NCLB “Reforms”

By dianeravitch
October 18, 2017 //
73

The Washington Post editorial board chastised Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ralph Northam for admitting that the NCLB reforms have failed, and Virginia needs to find a new paradigm for school improvement.

Lt. Governor Northam’s opponent, GOP functionary Ed Gillespie, is running on a Trump kiss-up platform, calling for the protection of Confederate statues and accusing Northam of having ties to a violent gang of Latinos, MS-13.

No doubt Gillespie will endorse the NCLB approach beloved by the Washington Post editorial board.

The Post is dead wrong. A new book by the eminent Harvard testing expert Daniel Koretz says in no uncertain terms that NCLB test-based accountability was a failure that seriously damaged American education. It is titled “The Testing Charade: Pretending to Make Schools Better.” The high-stakes testing mandated by NCLB and now the Every Student Succeeds Act, produced, in Professor Koretz’s words, score inflation, cheating, and teaching to the tests. Any “gains” are an illusion, because they represent test prep, not learning. (My review of the book will appear in “The New Republic” in the next few weeks.)

Lt. Gov. Northam is right. The Washington Post is seriously out of step on education. It supported Michelle Rhee’s punitive, test-focused regime and never admitted its error, long after John Merrow revealed the D.C. cheating scandal and long after Rhee slipped quietly into oblivion.

What’s the ideal accountability system? Northam admitted to the editorial board that he doesn’t know. Professor Koretz admitted he doesn’t know either. He throws out some ideas drawn from Finland, the Netherlands, and Singapore. There may be others as well, but frankly no one knows. For sure, the Washington Post editorial board doesn’t know, and the little it knows is wrong.

What doesn’t work is one-size-fits-all standards like Common Core. What doesn’t work is promising rewards or threatening punishment to teachers and principals, tied to test scores. Yet that is what the Washington Post advocates: Test-based accountability has failed, but the Post says, “stick with it.” The Post is wrong.

If you live in Virginia, vote for Northam for Governor, not the guy who has wrapped his arms around Donald Trump, Jeff Sessions, Scott Pruitt, Betsy DeVos and the others in the Trump Clown Car.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Failure, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Testing
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