Archives for category: For-Profit
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$$$$$$$: the Outrageous Story of Pitbull’s Charters

By dianeravitch
July 1, 2013 //
17

Hold on to your hat, sit down, then open this link, a bombshell post by Jersey Jazzman.

You will learn why Pitbull is a keynote speaker at the National Charter Schools Conference. It is not because he is a rapper who insults women.

You will learn that he and his family have perfected the art of using charters to become very rich.

You will learn about the sleazy deals that he and his family made with local politicians. You will learn that his family has built a multi-million dollar real estate empire with public money.

You will learn about Pitbull’s connection to Academica, South Florida’s largest and richest for-profit charter chain.

You will see how politicians profit, entrepreneurs profit, all on the public dime. Did I say “dime”? Sorry. Much more at stake here.

Should this man be honored or investigated? Jersey Jazzman reports, you decide.

Categories Charter Schools, Florida, For-Profit

North Carolina Legislature Puts a Few Limits on Charters

By dianeravitch
June 25, 2013 //
28

North Carolina’s SB 337 has been revised to add just a few limits to charter autonomy. There will not be a separate charter-friendly board to authorize charters; that responsibility will remain with the state board, which will likely be tilted towards charters anyway.

The original bill would have allowed all charter teachers to be uncertified. Currently, 75% of charter teachers in K-5 must be certified. The new bill drops that to 50%, instead of zero.

Charter teachers will be subject to criminal background checks. That’s a relief. And charters will be expected to reflect the racial diversity of their area.

Educators were less than thrilled with the low standards for charter teachers. One said, “Standards only seem to matter if you teach in a traditional public school system.” Another said, “A license is an assurance to the public, just like when I go to the doctor and look for his license to practice medicine…Do we want electricians and pharmacists to not have licenses? Do we want to create a professional system in which professionals are unlicensed?”

– See more at: http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2013/06/25/mixed-signals-on-charter-schools/#sthash.vsshLO2t.dpuf

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, North Carolina, Privatization, Teachers and Teaching

Anthony Cody: Bill Gates and the Invasion of the Profiteers

By dianeravitch
June 25, 2013 //
11

Anthony Cody draws a contrast between Lakeside Academy, where Bill Gates and his children were (and are) students, and the current model of education “reform,” which is driven by entrepreneurs and profit-seekers.

Lakeside Academy values the relationships between teachers and children. Greatschools like Lakeside, Cody writes, “emphasize experiential learning, empathy, and above all, relationships between teachers and students. And of course, class sizes are kept below twenty to make all this possible.”

Cody writes:

“The model offered by Lakeside is decidedly not efficient — at least when efficiency is defined as spending the least amount of money spent for a minimally satisfactory result. It requires experienced, expert teachers, small class sizes and excellent facilities. We could simply devote our efforts to making sure all schools got the funding they need to pay for these three basic things, and loosely monitor progress as such schools do, through occasional tests. But where would the profit be to “drive innovation”? So the drive for profits has led to a system redesign, with the introduction of new elements, required not for educational purposes but for the needs of the profit makers. Our education system is being remade to emulate a consumer-driven marketplace. What are the key components we must have?

1. A standardized testing accountability machine. In order for schools and various educational delivery systems to be compared, we must have a common set of standards and an efficient means of comparing the student learning that they produce.

2. A system by which schools that do not yield desired results are quickly dispatched, so as to create opportunities for innovators.

3. Standardized tests, test-aligned curriculum, and software designed to prepare students for tests.
Computer labs, laptops or tablets to allow for “personalized” instruction, delivery of computer-based instruction and assessment, and significantly larger class sizes.

4. Funding systems that allows money to “follow the child” to whatever form of schooling the parent might choose; including private, parochial, virtual, or home.”

Why don’t we do what the best schools do, instead of aligning our system for the benefit of what Cody calls “parasitic profiteers”?

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates

Republicans in NC Step Up Their War Against Public Education

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2013 //
29

Far-right Governor Pat McCrory has brought in an aggressive leader for his strategy to privatize public education and dismantle the teaching profession. That is Eric Guckian, the governor’s tip advisor on demolishing–re, transforming –North Carolina’s education system.

Guckian is a TFA alum with long experience in the corporate reform movement. He wants “an aggressive K-12charter school environment in the state.”

At a meeting of the governor’s task force on education (which has no teachers on it), “Guckian presented five pathways for education in North Carolina that included a call to dismantle walls and textbooks for “digital online solutions;” having the business community play a larger role in developing educational pathways; job-embedded professional training for teachers; and basing teachers’ salaries on their “outputs in the field.” You can see where this is heading: profits for corporations, a welcome mat for for-profit virtual providers, and no professional preparation for teachers.

A proposal–Senate Bill 337–is already in the works in the ALEC-dominated Legislature to set up a charter commission that takes supervision and authorization of charters away from the State Board of Education and gives it to a new charter-friendly board. This charter board will be able to authorize charters over the opposition of local school boards. Senate Bill 337 is extreme in its commitment to deregulation. Charters would be able to take any unused public space for only $1. They would not be subject to conflict of interest laws. Their employees would not be required to pass criminal background checks. Their teachers would not require certification of any kind. High school teachers need not be college graduates. They would be relieved of diversity requirements.

See more at: http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2013/06/19/mccrory-education-advisor-eric-guckian-calls-for-aggressive-charter-school-environment-in-north-carolina/#sthash.QuvJ7V2e.dpuf

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, North Carolina, On-Line Education

What Is the Role of Profit in School Reform?

By dianeravitch
June 18, 2013 //
10

Ken Previti, a retired teacher, has been watching the evolution of school “reform,” and he wonders when the public will catch on to the schemes and fear-mongering. What is it all about? Sell-sell-sell.

Just doing what business does. Monetizing the children.

Categories ALEC, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, On-Line Education, Privatization

Reader: How to Describe Corporate Reform in Plain English

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2013 //
31

A reader commented on an earlier discussion with these thoughts:
***************************************************************************

“”Does anyone else feel like we are basically being ignored?” – 2old2tch

While I applaud the sentiment and aspirations of this letter I am saddened with the weak tea rhetoric and carefully qualified points in academic insider language. This is how academics exchange views at conferences. Arne Duncan is not an academic and he has yet to show any respect for or interest in anything academics have to say.

Offering a long list of research citations is great if your are publishing in a peer-reviewed journal. Otherwise they indicate a false belief in the authority of the research, which the reform movement has largely ignored and dismissed all along. This high flown rhetoric doesn’t stand up well to Duncan’s canned talking points outside of academia.

A non-academic reading this might well ask: So what exactly are they saying? What exactly are they asking for? Where’s the beef?

Can we get a plain-spoken English translation, something like: You are destroying public schools and the teaching profession. Standardized testing is out of control, cruel, and useless in determining success of students and teachers. Your “Race to the Top” creates losers as well as winners. These programs have been tried over and over and always fail — why are you still promoting them?

If the purpose was to convince other academics then it serves that purpose well, a preaching to the choir moment. If the purpose is to impact and change wrong-headed policies then the audience should be much broader and the language much less academic and their tone much more forceful. That’s how the game is played today.

“Does anyone else feel like we are basically being ignored?” – 2old2tch

“Yes.”

Categories Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization, Vouchers

Pennsylvania: Now We Know the Truth About Cyber Charters

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2013 //
25

Rhonda Brownstein, the executive director of Pennsylvania’s Education Law Center, says that it is time to stop trusting the claims of cyber charter promoters. For years, they have promised that students would get “innovative” education and that wondrous things would happen when virtual charters became reality, but Pennsylvania now knows that none of that turned out to be true.

Pennsylvania has allowed unchecked growth of cyber charters. They have drained funding away from public schools while providing a low-quality of education.

She writes:

“Attorneys at ELC have heard from the families of many students attending cyber charter schools. Here’s what those families have reported: Students spending countless hours behind computer screens without any required human interaction; students with disabilities who are not receiving any appropriate academic instruction; and students who have been pushed into computer-based programs as a result of behavioral incidents.”

And she adds:

“Cyber charter supporters tout policy recommendations that focus on a theoretical version of the future without addressing the ill effects of Pennsylvania’s 13-year embrace of cyber charter schools. Some of those supporters go so far as to say that Pennsylvania is in jeopardy of falling behind other states in an imagined race to expand the number of cyber charter schools. But the truth is that, despite mounting evidence of the academic failure of these schools, Pennsylvania has blindly led the full-time cyber schooling movement for years. In fact, during the 2011-2012 school year Pennsylvania accounted for 16 percent of all students enrolled in full-time cyber schools in the entire country.”

“Pennsylvania has been experimenting with students in cyber charter schools under the guise of “innovation” for more than a decade. We no longer need to hypothesize about the results. Cyber charters do not work for the majority of the students they enroll.”

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, On-Line Education, Pennsylvania

Save Michigan Public Schools Rally on June 19

By dianeravitch
June 12, 2013 //
5

This just in.

Here is the flyer in downloadable form:

Education supporters plan huge grassroots rally at Mich Capitol June 19th

Grassroots power in action!

Please join us on the Capitol lawn beginning at 11:30 am on Wednesday, June 19th. We’re still working on lining up our speakers for the event, but we’ve already confirmed the following superstar advocates for public education:

Sen. Gretchen Whitmer (Senate Minority Leader)

Sen. Bert Johnson (D-Highland Park)

Rep. Brandon Dillon (D-Grand Rapids)

John Austin (President, State Board of Education)

Thomas Pedroni (Associate Professor, Wayne State Univ)

Superintendent Rod Rock (Clarkston Community Schools)

Jeff Kass (Ann Arbor Public Schools Teacher & Poet)

Sherry Gay-Dagnogo (Education Chair, National Congress of Black Women)

Steven Norton (Michigan Parents for Schools)

John Stewart (former member MI House of Representatives)

Mary Valentine (former member MI House of Representatives)

Stephanie Keiles (Plymouth-Canton Community Schools Teacher & Michigan Friends of Public Education)

Betsy Coffia (Save Michigan’s Public Schools)

K-12 Students Representing School Districts Around Michigan

And Master of Ceremonies … Tony Trupiano (Progressive Talk Radio Show Host/Night Shift with Tony Trupiano)

WHO ARE WE?
Save Michigan’s Public Schools is a non-partisan grassroots network of concerned citizens. Our goal is to connect parents, students, educators and communities across Michigan and raise awareness of threats to public education.

We believe a free, quality public education is the cornerstone of a democratic society. We believe every child in Michigan deserves access to equal and excellent educational opportunities through public education. We believe public education must be locally-controlled, fully-funded, delivered by highly qualified professional teachers, and devoid of corporate involvement.

To this end, we support policymakers and public officials who reject the corporate, profit-motivated takeover of public schools, massive school closures, and meaningless high-stakes testing. We support wise policies and laws that forward sound, research-based, evidence-based solutions to support and improve our existing public school system.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Michigan, Privatization

Failing Charter Becomes a Voucher School

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2013 //
6

Two low-performing for-profit Imagine charter schools in Fort Wayne, Indiana, were supposed to close because of their poor academic records. But instead of closing, they are merging with Horizon Christian Academy, where students will be encouraged to apply for vouchers.

Karen Francisco, the editorial page editor of the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, says that we now know that school “reform” has nothing to do with accountability as this move enables failing charters to evade any accountability for their performance.

Meanwhile, some public schools in Indiana are closing because of budget cuts.

Categories Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Indiana, Vouchers

Reader: The Close Ties Between Arne Duncan and the Broad Foundation

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2013 //
30

A reader offered the following comments on the relationship between Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and the Broad Foundation:

“There is no way Duncan limited testing when he was in Chicago because it would have impeded the corporate education reform agenda.

Arne Duncan was on the board of the Broad Foundation while he was the leader of Chicago schools. The modus operandi of Broad Foundation is deception. It is the method of implementing the Broad Foundations anti-democratic agenda.

On Page 10 of the 2009/2010 Broad Foundation Annual Report http://tinyurl.com/6w5sps2
it says:

“Prior to becoming U.S. secretary of education, Arne Duncan was CEO of Chicago Public Schools, where he hosted 23 Broad Residents. Duncan now has five Broad Residents and alumni working with him in the U.S. Department of Education.”

On Page 35 of the same annual report it says:

“The election of President Barack Obama and his appointment of Arne Duncan, former CEO of Chicago Public Schools, as the U.S. secretary of education, marked the pinnacle of hope for our work in education reform. In many ways, we feel the stars have finally aligned.

With an agenda that echoes our decade of investments—charter schools, performance pay for teachers, accountability, expanded learning time and national standards—the Obama administration is poised to cultivate and bring to fruition the seeds we and other reformers have planted.”

Categories Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization, Race to the Top
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