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Cat Fight at Florida Charter School

By dianeravitch
February 22, 2013 //
24

The board of the Imagine charter school in Sarasota decided to fire Imagine by a vote of 5-0 and take charge of managing the school, renamed Sarasota Prep. The board had been paying an annual management fee of $890,000 to the Imagine corporation, which is a for-profit charter chain.

The CEO of the charter school, Justin Matthews, announced to the staff that Imagine was no longer in charge.

But then things got more interesting, after the CEO sent this email:

“The almost 1 million dollars per year that was previously paid to our former Educational Management Organization (EMO), Imagine Schools, INC. will now be used directly to enhance our school’s program,” he wrote.

“In response, Imagine Schools sent its own email out to parents that said Matthews was placed administrative leave and the charter school’s board did not have the authority to leave.

“As we return to school on Tuesday, I believe it’s important to reassure you that your school and your child’s teacher remain full-fledged members of our Imagine Schools family. We are the parent company of Imagine North Port and not a management company to your campus. This means we have been here from the beginning, partnering with parents, community leaders, and the local Board to found this school. We have taken on long-term and multi-million dollar financial commitments to support Imagine North Port,” wrote Rod Sasse, executive vice president at Imagine Schools in Sunrise. “…On Friday, February 15, 2013, the local Imagine North Port board expressed an intention to sever affiliation with Imagine Schools. There are several fundamental misunderstandings in the Board’s belief that they have the legal ability to make such a decision and we are working to address and positively resolve this with the Board members.”

Who owns the charter? Imagine or the board? Who’s in charge? Can the board fire the management company?

Categories Charter Schools, Florida

Oklahoma Chief Channels Jeb Bush

By dianeravitch
February 22, 2013 //
8

Coach Bob Sikes in Florida knows how phony that state’s A-F grading system is. (This was confirmed recently by Matt Di Carlo of the Shanker Institute, who pointed out that the state changed the system to improve the results.)

Now he finds that Oklahoma State Superintendent Janet Barresi is copying the Jeb Bush playbook.

This is hardly surprising because she is a member of the Jeb Bush group of rightwing state superintendents called “Chiefs for Change.”

Barresi wants Oklahoma to grade its schools with a simple-minded A-F grade, just like Jeb Bush did. If Jeb did it, it must be right. Remember the “Florida miracle”?

Unfortunately a group of Oklahoma researchers examined her proposal and sharply criticized it.

No problem for Barresi. She has been going around the state telling people that the researchers have recanted their views. Except they haven’t.

Before Barresi was elected superintendent, she was a speech pathologist. In 1984, she became a dentist. Later, she opened Oklahoma City’s first charter school and served on the board of another charter school. She is a big supporter of privatization.

 

 

Categories Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Chiefs for Change, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Florida, Oklahoma, Privatization, Testing

A Florida High School Student Speaks Truth to Power

By dianeravitch
February 20, 2013 //
11

What lessons do we teach young people about government when they see the lies told about their schools and their teachers by public officials? Are we teaching them that elected officials can say anything at all, with no regard for truth or reality?

This is a letter from a high school student in Florida. Please read it. She makes more sense than the deciders in DC and Tallahassee or the pundits.

Esther, don’t give up hope. We need your good sense to turn this nation and your state around.

She writes:

I am a high school student who attends a public school in Seminole County and I applaud you for this blog. This past year especially I have felt as if every other second I’m being force-fed a meaningless statistic about how wonderful the education is in Florida and how we are excelling by leaps and bounds, while I watch teachers and students alike suffer the consequences of these careless political decisions.

Our school’s media center is also a “Hub for Technology” computer lab to be used by teachers for testing, and 124 out of the 180 school days it is being used for just that – PERT, EOC, FCAT, AP, SAT, ACT, semester exams – when are teachers supposed to have the time to teach? We worry about budget cuts (to an already laughable budget), but while faculty and staff are being laid off and programs cut, the money is being handed away to test makers. These tests give us meaningless figures to show everyone we can that we’re “progressing” but personally I believe we are regressing.

And the evaluation systems for both teachers AND students are so ridiculous, it’s as if the public school system is a parody of itself. The pressure a teacher is put under to have all of the correct phrases, learning goals, and “percentile gain” methods on display in their classrooms; I honestly don’t know how they manage to do it. Stopping to have every high school student hold up a hand gesture and gauge their understanding on a lesson every time one is taught, just because these Marzano techniques were highly effective in ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS is, to me, insane.

I don’t even know what to do about any of this either aside from hope that someone with power, someone with common sense, someone with a love of EDUCATION, realizes what is going on and decides to take action. Because seeing my teachers crumpling under stress due to the greed of heartless politicians is something that I can hardly stomach.

Categories Florida, Students, Testing

Renewed Battle Over Parent Trigger In Florida

By dianeravitch
February 19, 2013 //
10

“Parent trigger” is a zombie policy. It has never transformed a single school. It has no evidence. It is a slogan pretending to be a policy. It is the quintessence of a corporate power grab.

In the wake of the Newtown massacre, no decent person should utter the words “parent trigger.”

But in Florida, Coach Bob Sikes alerts his readers to the return of the “parent trigger” legislation that failed to pass last year. It failed because–no matter how hard Jeb Bush and Michelle Rhee promoted it–every parent group in Florida opposed it. Somehow the PTAs understood that “parent empowerment” would benefit the corporations running charter schools, not their children.

Jeb Bush vowed to bring it back, and here it comes. Only here is an interesting turn of events. One of the sponsors is a Republican legislator who was not friendly to charters last year. Coach Bob wonders if her change of heart has anything to do with the campaign contributions doled out by the for-profit charter corporations.

By the way, he doesn’t mention it here, but Frank Biden is an executive with the for-profit Mavericks charter chain cited in his post. Frank is the brother of Joe Biden.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Parent trigger, Privatization, Rhee, Michelle

How Tony Bennett Won While Losing

By dianeravitch
February 18, 2013 //
0

Dan Carpenter explains here how defeated superintendent Tony Bennett plans to keep control of Indiana even though he is now state superintendent in Florida.

Those corporate reformers love to mess up schools and communities with their big ideas.

They don’t like democracy.

Categories Florida, Indiana

Ken Previti: Brevard County Schools Did Not Have to Close

By dianeravitch
February 17, 2013 //
5

Ken Previti writes this comment about the three public schools closed in Brevard County over the objections of the parents. The best solution: Elect a new school board. Run for school board. Organize and mobilize.

One harsh fact needs to be remembered about school closings, teacher evaluations and school ranking by student test scores. The total amount that “needed” to be cut from the budget by closing three Brevard schools was identical to the amount “needed” to build the new charter school demanded by the appointed Florida State Board of Education.

Brevard County IS the Space Coast, home of brilliant Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral engineers and large military installations and military/industrial corporations.. (I live there.) It is also overwhelmingly republican at-all-costs, and that includes Tea Party candidates.

Tea Party Republican Billionaire Gov. Rick Scott was the CEO of the corporation convicted of the biggest fraud against Medicare in history. When questioned personally he replied that he repeatedly refused to answer on the grounds that it might incriminate him, yet his money paid for TV messages that got him elected.

Past Gov. Jeb Bush, brother of W. and son of H.W., has organizations and investments in huge corporate education reform interests – including testing and test prep materials.
The school closings are a scam.

“Public-private partnerships” is the euphemism meaning “public tax money for private profit.” The school closings and the charter school building (scheduled to be built blocks from where I live) are part of the financial scam of the selling of America – one school at a time.

Categories Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Florida, For-Profit, Privatization, Support for public schools

Brevard County Closes Schools, Despite Parents’ Tears

By dianeravitch
February 16, 2013 //
21

The school board in Brevard County, Florida, voted to close three popular schools, to save money.

Parents protested, along with local elected officials, but the board spared only one school. The chair of the board acknowledged that they were compelled to close good schools.

“Tears streaming down her face, Gardendale Elementary Parent Karen Proctor said she didn’t know what to say to her 7-year-old son.

“And then her tone changed – and she promised to shift her passion from working to keep the school open to kicking out the board members who voted in favor of the closures.

“It’s disgusting,” she said. “It’s not OK.”

It’s puzzling that the richest, most powerful nation in the world can’t afford to keep its public schools open.

Categories Closing schools, Florida

Florida Pays Crooks and Liars to Tutor Kids

By dianeravitch
February 15, 2013 //
6

Florida hands out millions of dollars to ex-convicts, profiteers, and crooks to tutor poor kids.

People who would never be hired to teach in a public school because of their criminal history are paid as much as $60 an hour to tutor needy students.

The program has no accountability or quality.

The next time you hear boasting about Florida, think of this story. Privatization opens the public treasury to corruption. It’s predictable.

Another step backward for American education.

Categories Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Privatization

Jeb Bush: Change the Rules of the Game and Win

By dianeravitch
February 12, 2013 //
23

Matt Di Carlo of the Shanker Institute here dissects the claims of Jeb Bush about the success of the state letter grade system.

As he shows, the number of A-rated schools went up because the state changed the rules of the game.

You can always get more points on the basketball court if you drop the basket a foot or two.

You can get more home runs if you bring the fences closer.

Are people foolish enough to believe the boast that Florida is now a model for the nation?

I happen to think that letter grades for schools are a ridiculous idea. Schools are complex institutions that do some things well and some things not as well. One can come up with a rating system that is far more sophisticated than a grade of A-F.

No one would dream of sending a child home with a report card with only one letter on it. Why in the world would anyone label a school with a single letter?

This is the rankest sort of political interference in the functioning of education.

No state or district should use letter grades to reward or humiliate schools.

This is politics, not accountability.

And it has nothing to do with improving education.

When the National Association of Independent Schools starts handing out letter grades to its members, let me know.

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Florida

Vote for This Man for School Board!

By dianeravitch
February 11, 2013 //
29

I don’t know Michael Weston, but I love his comment below.

He is a teacher in Hillsborough County, Florida, which received many millions of dollars from the Gates Foundation to pilot a new teacher evaluation program.

Bill and Melinda visited the district and expressed great pleasure at the compliments directed their way. They don’t seem to realize that 1) educators are very polite (as a rule), and 2) people are starstruck in the presence of billionaires.

But Michael Weston knows the score.

He decided enough is enough, and look what he is doing:

 

I am the Union Rep at my high school (in Hillsborough County). Just two hours ago I was explaining to some members that there was absolutely nothing (except running for School Board) I could do about:
1. High school science teachers being evaluated by a former sixth grade teacher.
2. That no consideration is given to how long you have been teaching a particular class, nor how many different class preps you have.
3. That a sleeping child will count against you, but God forbid you touch the child’s desk or anything else that may call attention to a particular kid.
4. All of the teachers being fired this year for poor evaluations are over 40.
5. Since it is a totally subjective rating, they can kill you based on your style vs their style.
etc, etc. etc.
And why is there nothing I can do as their Union rep? The Hillsborough Teacher’s Union is a full participant and support of this nonsense.

So, I filed to run for School Board. Someone has to stop this.

Categories Florida, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Teacher Evaluations
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