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Carol Burris: Unmasking a Major Charter Scam in Florida

By dianeravitch
August 2, 2019 //
6

Carol Burris wrote this article about the confluence of charter schools and greed in Florida. 

Just when you think you have heard it all, there is yet another story of cupidity associated with “nonprofit charter schools.”

The corruption never ends.

Burris begins:

The original mission of the federal Charter Schools Program of the U.S. Department of Education was to help new charter schools get on their feet by providing start-up help. The program began small during the Clinton administration when Congress awarded it $6 million to give to states and a handful of schools that directly applied.

The program, known as CSP, is now a behemoth with a budget approaching a half billion. Congress, bending in part to pressure by the charter lobby, added additional programs and funding over the years. Special funding streams now exist for a variety of charter-related services including two different CSP funding streams (one federal, another state) to support the building and renovation of charter schools.

There are some who now argue that part of the charter movement, amply funded by the federal government, has become a web of interconnected vested interests for whom real estate is the central focus.

The story of one of its recent grantees, a nonprofit organization known as Building Hope, provides a case in point.

It turns out to be very lucrative to build hope.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Corruption, Education Industry, Florida, Fraud, Privatization

Florida: Teachers in Orange County Overwhelmingly Reject New Contract

By dianeravitch
July 30, 2019 //
22

Just in: Teachers in Orange County, Florida, defeated a contract proposal by a vote of 4-1.

The contract would have raised wages but increased health care costs which would have left many teachers with less income overall.

The average teacher pay in the county is $49,000.

It is outrageous that teachers are paid so little, and that the state continues diverting public money to charters and vouchers.

What does the future hold for Florida, where education is a political football and held in such low regard?

 

Categories Florida, Teacher Pay, Unions

Florida: The Revenge of the Impoverished Adjuncts

By dianeravitch
July 27, 2019 //
14

 

Higher education rests on the backs of ill-paid adjunct professors, who spent years getting a Ph.D., then learned that full-time positions were nearly impossible to find.

This article describes a revolt by the adjuncts in Florida. 

“Two half-time adjunct jobs do not make a full-time income. Far from it,” Ximena Barrientos says. “I’m lucky that I have my own apartment. I have no idea how people make it work if they have to pay rent.”

We are not sitting on a street corner, or in a welfare office, or in the break room of a fast food restaurant. We are sitting inside a brightly lit science classroom on the third floor of an MC Escher-esque concrete building, with an open breezeway letting in the muggy South Florida air, on the campus of Miami Dade College, one of the largest institutions of higher learning in the United States of America. Barrientos has been teaching here for 15 years. But this is not “her” classroom. She has a PhD, but she does not have a designated classroom. Nor does she have an office. Nor does she have a set schedule, nor tenure, nor healthcare benefits, nor anything that could be described as a decent living wage. She is a full-time adjunct professor: one of thousands of members of the extremely well-educated academic underclass, whose largely unknown sufferings have played just as big a role as student debt in enabling the entire swollen College Industrial Complex to exist.

As Barrientos chatted with another adjunct in the empty classroom, the conversation turned to horror stories: the adjuncts forced to sleep in their cars; the adjunct who was sleeping in classrooms at night; the adjunct who had a full mental breakdown from the stress of not being able to earn a living after all of the time he had put in getting his PhD. Such stories are common, from campus to campus, whispered by adjuncts who know deep down that they themselves are living constantly on the edge of personal, professional, and financial disaster. Other than academic credentials, most adjunct professors don’t have much. But recently, Ximena Barrientos, and her 2,800 colleagues at Miami Dade College, and thousands of others just like them throughout the state of Florida, have acquired, at shocking speed and on a grand scale, something of great value—a union. And they want nothing less than dignity….

University budgets are balanced on the backs of adjunct professors. In an adjunct, a school gets the same class taught for about half the salary of a full-time professor, and none of the benefits. The school also retains a god-like control over the schedules of adjuncts, who are literally laid off after every single semester, and then rehired as necessary for the following semester. In the decade since the financial crisis, state governments have slashed higher education funding, and Florida is no exception. That has had two primary consequences on campus: students have taken on ever-higher levels of debt to pay for school, and the college teaching profession has been gutted, as expensive full-time positions are steadily eliminated in favor of cheaper adjunct positions. Many longtime adjuncts talk of jealously waiting for years for a full-time professor to die or retire, only to see the full-time position eliminated when they finally do.

What can the adjuncts do? They are doing what they must, the only thing they can do to get decent working conditions and a living wage: they are unionizing.

Categories Education Reform, Florida, Higher Education

John Thompson: The Cruel Policy of Punishing Little Children to Raise Their Test Scores

By dianeravitch
July 20, 2019 //
30

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, posts frequently about education in his state.

 

Last week, National Public Radio’s Alexandra Starr first reported on Florida’s mandatory retention of 3rd graders who don’t pass a reading proficiency test. Even though it is stigmatizing for children to be retained, and “multiple studies have found that flunking a grade makes it much more likely students will fail to graduate from high school,” the high stakes testing law has spread to about 40 percent of states.

States Are Ratcheting Up Reading Expectations For 3rd-Graders

NPR’s Starr draws on experts like Pedro Noguera, Nell Duke, and Diane Horm, while explaining how short-term benefits of 3rd grade retention “dissipate over time.” She also cites Marty West, a Big Data researcher who sidesteps the anxiety imposed on children and pressure on teachers to increase pass rates through ill-conceived instructional practices, and says that Florida’s well-funded mandatory retention law doesn’t hurt students’ graduation rates. Neither does West address states like Oklahoma, with chronic underfunding of education.And that leads to the first slippery slope created by Florida’s willingness to scale up punishments for young children and their teachers in order to improve student performance. At least it invests more than $130 million per year on its reading sufficiency act. When Oklahoma legislators, who were often persuaded by Jeb Bush’s public relations campaign, passed its reading act, they intended to invest $150 per struggling reader, but they only came up with $6 million, which was enough for only about $75 per student. It took six years to find money for about $153 per student.

For First Time, ‘Read or Fail’ Law Is Fully Funded. Will It Reduce Retentions?

In NPR’s second report focusing on Tulsa Ok., Starr shows the benefits of well-funded, holistic pre-kindergarten instruction. Oklahoma and edu-philanthropists fund such classes for 4-year-olds; nearly 3/4ths of Oklahoma students enroll in pre-k. And, next door to a comprehensive pre-k partnership, the majority-Hispanic Rosa Parks Elementary School illustrates the promise of partnerships for improving public schools. It is a part of the Tulsa Union community school system which so impressed David Kirp that his New York times article that featured Rosa Parks was entitled “Who Needs Charters When You Have Schools Like These?”  Oklahoma Among States Setting Higher Reading Expectations For 3rd-Graders

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/01/opinion/sunday/who-needs-charters-when-you-have-public-schools-like-these.htmlA Rosa Parks elementary teacher explained the dilemma schools face regarding kids who aren’t on track to pass the high stakes 3rd grade test, “Very early on, we have to put them on a plan if we think that they’re going to be held back in third grade for a test.” Unfortunately Starr didn’t have time to dig into those plans the way that Oklahoma Watch’s Jennifer Palmer has done. It leads to the second slippery slope created by high stakes testing for 3rd graders.

Palmer cites a librarian who explained, “‘RSA allows two years of retention, and two years in third grade would be worse,’ she said. ‘They would be completely destroyed.’” And that raises the question about the risks educators can/must take in order to not completely destroy their students.

The Oklahoma Watch’s study of federal data showed that 2,533 3rd graders were retained in 2015-16. Worse, she found that “repeating a grade is actually more common in kindergarten and first grade,” and “the high-stakes third-grade test appears to drive many of the early retentions.”  Oklahoma retained 3,977 kindergarteners, and a total of 10,345 students in the kindergarten through 2ndgrades.

These retentions were not evenly spread across the state. Next door to Tulsa Union, the Tulsa Public Schools, for instance, has about 2-1/3rds as many students as Union. The TPS retained 823 students through kindergarten and second grade, or more than 4-1/3rds as many. We can only hope that the edu-philanthropists who fund worthy early education programs, as well as their opposite – the corporate reform policies of Deborah Gist’s TPS – will realize how and why those two approaches are the antithesis of each other..

Palmer also touched on the third slippery slope when she explained the benchmark assessments that are used in predicting failure on the end-of-year tests. She writes, “Schools also rely on computerized benchmarking programs to glean more information on students’ skillsets and how they compare to other students their age.” But, to say the least, they are “not an exact science.” This leads to crucial, potentially life-changing and risky decisions being made by parents and teachers using data on a computer screen that they acknowledge they don’t understand.

Lastly, the dehumanizing slide down into systems where the punitive is seen as normal, even for our youngest students, might or might not have been predictable. Twenty years ago, the reward and punishment of kindergarteners would have seemed despicable. Market-driven reform may have begun as a way to force teachers to comply. Then it was dumped on teenagers. Now, when such stressful incentives and disincentives are imposed on 5-year-olds, it doesn’t seem surprising to read Big Data studies that claim that those who fail tests in the states with the most funding for competition-driven reform may not be damaged as much as previously thought …     

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Cruelty, Early Childhood Education, Florida, Oklahoma, Testing

Carol Burris: Who Is Ferdinand Zulueta?

By dianeravitch
July 1, 2019 //
9

Carol Burris wrote this post on learning that the National Charter Schools  Conference was honoring charter chain founder Ferdinand Zulueta.

 

I am dumfounded that Fernando Zulueta is being honored by the National Charter Schools Conference. He and his brother run one of the most notorious for-profit charter management companies in the country, Academica. The Office of Inspector General’s audit of three Academica schools — Excelsior, Mater High and Mater East  found that the Board of the Excelsior charter school, which ended its relationship with Academica in 2013, allowed Academica to find, design and procure facilities, recommend staff, conduct the day-to-day running of the school, assume responsibilities for accounting, budgeting and produce its financial forecast. The for-profit CMO participated in all charter board meetings and made recommendations to the board.

OIG’s audit of the two Mater charter schools identified related party transactions between the for-profit Academica and a real estate company that leased both buildings and security services to the schools.

Although the audit is difficult to follow due to extensive redactions, it is clear that the investigation found inappropriate transactions among the CMO, School Development HG II, L.L.C., School Development East L.L.C., Duke School Properties, L.L.C. and the charter schools.

School Development Corporation HG II owned and leased a building to Mater High School while School Development East owned and leased a building to Mater East. School Development Corporation was owned by a Panamanian company, the Wolfson Hutton Development Company. The directors of the Wolfson Hutton Company were the Zulueta brothers, one of whom is being honored at the Charter Schools Conference. The brothers were the founders of both the Mater Academies and Academica. The details of the complex for-profit web can be found here in an earlier investigative report by the Miami-Dade Public Schools.

According to OIG, there was no evidence that the relationship between the CMO and the real estate company was disclosed to the charter school’s board of directors at the time of the original lease; nor was there any “evidence of a discussion regarding the renewal of the management agreement with Academica or the reasonableness of CMO services or fees.” The original real estate transactions took place while Fernando Zulueta served on the Mater Board.

By 2010, the Zulueta brothers controlled more than $115 million in Florida tax-exempt real estate with the companies collecting about $19 million in lease payments. Many of the charter schools paid rents well above expected rates. Academica not only benefited from renting real estate it owned, it also sold payroll, employer services, construction services, equipment leasing and school services to the schools.

Considering the complicated web of conflicts of interest and raw profiteering, one would think that Academica would have been scaled back. Not at all. Deep-pocket contributions to Florida lawmakers have shielded Academica and other for-profit CMOs from regulations that inhibit their ability to make a profit off taxpayer funds. And then there are the legislators who are profiting from charter schools.

Until 2016, Academica’s closest ally in the capital was Fernando Zulueta’s brother-in-law, [former Florida House Rep.] Erik Fresen. Fresen, a former lobbyist for Academica, served as chairman of the House Education Appropriations even while working as a consultant for a firm called Civica which had contracts with Academica schools.

During his eight years in the legislature, Fresen never bothered to file his taxes, resulting in a 60-day prison sentence after he left office.

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

Jan Resseger: Florida’s Education Disaster

By dianeravitch
June 29, 2019 //
10

 

In this post, Jan Resseger surveys the war against public schools in Florida.

Sue Legg summarized the abject failure of Jeb Bush’s A+ Plan here.

The drive to privatize public schools was masterminded by Jeb Bush, with the help of Betsy DeVos, a compliant Republican Legislature (including some who own or operate charter schools), and a zest to give public money to entrepreneurs and grifters.

Asshe points out, recent legislation requires school districts to share their tax levies with charter schools over which they have no control.

Privatization and school choice are rooted in the desire for profit and segregation.

Despite Jeb Bush’s propaganda campaign, his A+ Plan deserves an F-.

Bush, that educational genius, invented the idea of labeling schools with a single letter.

Floridians now treat school grades as normal, but only 15 states require them, mostly low-performing. states. 

I have said it before and I was say it again: School grades are stupid. They are idiotic. Under Bloomberg as mayor, NYC had school grades for a few years. They were meaningless. The public school in my Brooklyn neighborhood was rated A one year; the Mayor and Joel Klein made a ceremonial visit to the school to congratulate the principal and staff. The next year it got a grade of F. Nothing had changed. Same principal, same staff.

If your child came home with a report card that had only one letter, you would be incensed. Why then should anyone accept a single letter grade for an institution with hundreds of staff and students and multiple programs?

School grades deserve an F. A truly dumb idea. No state should use them.

Education in Florida is a mess that is designed to benefit privateers and harm public schools.

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

National Education Policy Center: Florida Claims About Charter Schools Are Meaningless

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2019 //
4

Latest research review from NEPC:

Simple comparisons reveal very little about the relative effectiveness of charter schools.

Tuesday, June 18, 2019

Publication Announcement

Florida Report Offers Meager Insight into Charter School Performance

KEY TAKEAWAY:

Simple comparisons reveal very little about the relative effectiveness of charter schools.

CONTACT:
TwitterEmail Address

BOULDER, CO (June 18, 2019) – The Florida Department of Education recently published a report consisting almost entirely of simple graphs comparing achievement levels, achievement gaps, and achievement gains on statewide tests among charter school students to those among traditional public school students. The Department’s press release touted the report as showing that the state’s “charter school students consistently outperform their peers in traditional public schools.”

The release also quotes Florida’s Education Commissioner, asserting that the “report provides further evidence that [school choice policies] are right for Florida” and that there’s “no denying that choice works.” The press release’s spin was then echoed in pieces published/broadcast by several television stations, newspapers, and online outlets.

Yet simple comparisons such as those in this report reveal very little about the relative effectiveness of charter schools. Robert Bifulco of Syracuse University, reviewed Student Achievement in Florida’s Charter Schools: A Comparison of the Performance of Charter School Students with Traditional Public School Students, and found it to be of extremely limited use.

Beyond the odd exercise of counting the number of comparisons that appear favorable to charter schools, the report offers no discussion. The comparisons are not even explained. The fact that the report merely presents comparisons required by law without putting any policy “spin” on them might be considered a virtue. But the danger is that such reports can (and do) encourage erroneous conclusions.

At the very least, Professor Bifulco believes, the report should have clarified the purposes of its comparisons and cautioned the reader against drawing unwarranted and potentially harmful conclusions.

Find the review, by Robert Bifulco, at:

http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/fl-charters

Find Student Achievement in Florida’s Charter Schools: A Comparison of the Performance of Charter School Students with Traditional Public School Students, published by the Florida Department of Education, at:

http://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/7778/urlt/SAR1819.pdf

NEPC Reviews (http://thinktankreview.org) provide the public, policymakers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected publications. NEPC Reviews are made possible in part by support provided by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice: http://www.greatlakescenter.org

The National Education Policy Center (NEPC), housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education, produces and disseminates high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions. Visit us at: http://nepc.colorado.edu

Copyright 2018 National Education Policy Center. All rights reserved.
Categories Charter Schools, Florida, Hoax, National Education Policy Center

Florida: Politicians Fund Anti-LGBT Schools

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2019 //
30

In Florida, the Governor and legislators proclaim their love of “equality,” as they funnel millions of public dollars to religious schools that openly discriminate against LGBT students. 

The state currently spends $1 billion a year on vouchers and the Legislature recently voted to expand them.

During pride month, Florida politicians love talking about their passion for equality.

They’re much less eager to talk about the anti-equality programs they fund the rest of the year — specifically millions of public dollars they send to schools that discriminate against LGBT families and even expel students who say they’re gay.

At one of Florida’s approved voucher schools in Brevard County, for example, being gay is actually the only expellable offense listed in the school’s “ethics” policy.

Lying, cheating and destruction of school property are also bad, according to the Merritt Island Christian School student handbook — but only to the extent that they’re listed as “Class II infractions” worthy of punishments like a five-day suspension.

Categories Bias, Bigotry, Florida, Hypocrisy, Religion, Vouchers

Peter Greene: Why Does Anyone Listen to Jeb Bush’s Failed Ideas?

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2019 //
18

 

Peter Greene read an unusually annoying article in the Detroit News that showed just out of touch the authors are.

Michigan is a state that went overboard for school choice, thanks to former Governor John Engler and the billionaire DeVos family.

Michigan has dropped down to the bottom of NAEP, as scores have collapsed for every group.

Jeb Bush arrives to tell Michigan what they need to do is double down on their failed strategies. More choice. More testing. More accountability. More threats. More punishments.

Bush claimed that these strategies worked in Florida but they didn’t.As Greene notes, fourth grade score went up only because the state holds back third graders who don’t pass the third grade reading test. By eighth grade, students in Florida are at the national average.

Who aspires to be average?

Things are so bad in Michigan that average looks good. It is not.

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, Florida, Fraud, Michigan, Privatization, School Choice, Testing

Florida: A Teacher Quits, Beaten Down by the State’s Toxic Testing Culture

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2019 //
27

Florida has a large teacher shortage, about 10,000 at last count. Under the tutelage of Jeb Bush, the Florida Legislature has made testing and privatization the centerpiece of state education policy, while treating public schools and their teachers as enemies for almost 20 years. Florida holds public schools to strict accountability, based on test scores, but imposes no accountability for the religious schools that get vouchers, and showers state money on charters. The Legislature seems to be intent on replacing public schools with charters (half of which operate for-profit) and vouchers and replacing teachers with computers.

This teacher from Polk County has had enough. 

Shanna L. Fox writes:

Stand Up and Fight – An Open Letter of Resignation
There is no business model that can fix education. Students are not products and services that can be quantified. They are living, breathing human beings and their complexity cannot be reduced to cells on a spreadsheet.
Each child comes with their own set of needs, strengths, and abilities. Teachers must be provided the freedom to address those in the way that they professionally know is best based on their training and education.
My expertise is in a Language Arts classroom, so this is what I see most clearly. Students can analyze the hell out of a text. But testing has chipped away at the time teachers have to help their students write to inspire, write to express, write to create, write to change the world. Because what matters, in today’s education system, is one single way of writing. The thing is, our students are whole people, and this only provides them a chance to show a tiny sliver of who they are.
It’s not only Language Arts, though. This toxic testing nightmare has stripped students of the opportunity to foster their creativity in every single subject area. Children are being denied the right to express themselves in their own unique ways. They yearn for the chance to be artistic and imaginative, to be inspired and inspire others, and to innovate and build and solve. They are capable of more than simply working toward a test score. They deserve more.
And it is time for me to stand up and fight for them and the profession I love.
After twenty years, the decision to resign did not come easily. In fact, it has taken me two months to process and collect my thoughts and to muster up the courage to share them here.
Leaving my stable, secure career as a classroom teacher was risky. I was willing to risk everything because giving it all up feels like freedom in comparison to the restriction in which I was living.
My decision to walk away was not impulsive. It was years in the making. I almost walked away last year. I almost walked away two years ago. When I finally gained the courage, it wasn’t the administration, the school, or the students. And it certainly wasn’t my wonderful colleagues. None of those things drove me away. Instead, I was battle weary from years of working in a broken system. And honestly, I could not face another testing season.
I thought this transition would be more difficult than it has been. I thought I would be devastated and depressed. But I haven’t been. Now, I realize why. The truth is, I have been grieving the loss of my profession for years. I was grieving the time I used to have to foster meaningful relationships with my students. I was grieving a time when I was trusted to teach well, based on my training and knowledge. I was grieving a time when student creativity was valued over a test score.
But that simply isn’t the reality anymore. 
Over the past six years, I changed grade levels, campuses, and roles. I even returned to the school that felt like “home” with the people who I consider family. I searched tirelessly for the thing that would reignite my passion for teaching and renew my sense of hope for the future of the public school system. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t find it. 
And I’m not alone. This has been called a silent strike – teachers exiting the profession prematurely or retiring early. But I, for one, will not leave silently. Although I can no longer work within this broken system, I will stand and fight from where I am now. I will work to fix it.
I am not writing to encourage others to leave teaching. This was a personal, individual decision that I made to preserve my physical, mental, and emotional health. But if you do decide to walk away, as I did, please do not be silent. If you’ve already exited or retired early, for your very own unique reasons, please speak up. This shouldn’t be a silent strike. It should be the loudest protest of all time because speaking up for public education is speaking up for our children and, quite frankly, for the foundation of our democracy.
To my colleagues who continue to work for change within their classroom walls, I am standing by your side. I support you. I know you are doing what is best for your students, even with mounting pressures, longer task lists than ever before, and mandates upon mandates. I applaud your strength and dedication. I can’t wait to meet Bella’s amazing teachers during her upcoming journey as a public school student. I hope they are just like you.
To my former students, you are the reason I stayed for twenty years. As a teacher, I learned so much from you. And now, I marvel at your continued success, your ability to achieve your dreams, and your capacity to tackle the obstacles of life. I was proud of you then, and I am proud of you now – every single day. 
To the Polk Education Association, I thank you for your tireless efforts to quell the overwhelming tide of negativity. I know that you fight tooth and nail for every single right, benefit, and dollar that PCPS employees get. I am proud to have been a member of the union. I may not be working from the inside anymore. But I will be here, battling right alongside you. After all, you’re the ones who taught me how.
I’ll be honest. When I was a Polk County Public Schools employee, I didn’t take a stand each time there was an opportunity to do so. But I know that I did not take this career risk to sit on the sidelines and watch.
I’m standing now.
I am standing for our students.
I am standing for our teachers. 
I am standing for public education.
In solidarity,
Shanna R. Fox
Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Education Industry, Florida, Teacher Shortage, Testing
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