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More Imagine Charters Close in Indiana

By dianeravitch
January 22, 2013 //
38

Ball State University announced that it was not renewing seven charters.

Among the seven were three Imagine charters, one in Indianapolis and two in Fort Wayne.

Imagine is one of the nation’s biggest for-profit charter operators.

Last year, Imagine lost all its charter schools in Missouri and the remainder of its schools in Georgia.
This year, Imagine was closed in St. Petersburg, Florida, and one of its schools in D.C. is in trouble.
These closures raise an interesting question about the risk involved for corporations that invest in charter schools. Imagine is backed by a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) called Entertainment Properties, which also invests in multiplexes, real estate, and shopping malls. Entertainment Properties owns MASTer Academy in Ft. Wayne and the shuttered Imagine Indiana Life Sciences Academy-East  in Indianapolis. 
Another Imagine school in Indianapolis (also owned by EPR) apparently was not up for renewal this cycle.
The CEO of Entertainment Properties Trust was boasting just last year that charter schools were a stable business opportunity, “very recession-resistant,” and he added: “there’s not a lost of risk, there’s probably risk to everything but the fact is, this has bipartisan support. It’s part of the Republican platform and Arne Duncan, secretary of education in the Obama administration, has been very high on it throughout their work in public education. So we have both political parties very solidly behind it, you have high demand, high growth, you have good performance across the board.”
Well, there is actually quite a lot of risk when the authorizers start cracking down on low performers.
The sad part is that the opening and closing of schools disrupts the lives of children and destroys communities. If it is just another investment, well, so be it. If it is the life of your child or your community, it matters quite a lot.
Need we say it again and again: Schools are not shoe stores or barber shops. They should not open and close at will. Public schools should be a permanent fixture in every community, as assured as roads and police stations. If they need help, they should get it. If they need a new principal, they should get it. That’s the job of public officials, not entrepreneurs.
Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization

How to Get a Docile Workforce

By dianeravitch
January 22, 2013 //
32

Some people have wondered what happened to the much ballyhooed film “Won’t Back Down.”

Recall that it was featured on NBC’s “Education Nation,” which is the showcase for the corporate reform movement; one of its stars was interviewed on “Ellen”; it had an elegant opening party at the New York Public Library; Michelle Rhee hosted showings at the two national political conventions.

Should have been a big hit, right? Wrong.

It opened in 2,5000 theaters and disappeared within a month. Hardly anyone wanted to see it.

But it lives! The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is showing it around the country to business organizations, to convince them that the local public schools are awful and that they must support charter schools. Think of it: Schools where children learn to obey or get kicked out.

Here are the events planned for this week in Birmingham, Alabama, where businesses are still looking for the best way to train their workforce:

 

“Greetings,

On behalf of the Birmingham Business Alliance, I would like to thank each of for agreeing to participate in our panel discussion next week in conjunction with our “Breaking the Monopoly of Mediocrity in Education” tour.  As we continue to work towards providing all students in the state of Alabama with quality education options and creating a dynamic workforce, it is important to have dialogue with those who are not only advocates for better education but, who are also actively working to bring about change.  Attached you will find the final agenda as well as talking points for each panel.  Within each panel, if there is an issue that you feel should be addressed, please don’t hesitate to send your suggestion.  A more detailed email will be sent on Tuesday of next week and will address any concerns or changes that are brought to my attention by panel participants.  Again, we are excited to have each of you participate in this interactive forum.  Please feel free to forward the invitation and registration link to any of your contacts or distribution list who would be interested in attending.

Thank you and we look forward to your participation.

L. Waymond Jackson, Jr.
Director – Education and Workforce Development
birminghambusinessalliance
THE CHAMBER FOR REGIONAL PROSPERITY
505 20th Street North, Suite 200
Birmingham, AL 35203
(205) 241-8117 (office)
(205) 324-2560 (fax)
www.birminghambusinessalliance.com<http://www.birminghambusinessalliance.com/>

On January 24th and 25th please join the Birmingham Business Alliance, the U. S. Chamber of Commerce and the Institute for a Competitive Workforce as we kick-off their national tour “Breaking the Monopoly of Mediocrity in Education.”  The tour will focus on the various methods of education reform, business community involvement and engaging the community to become catalyst for change in education and workforce development.  Most recently, this tour has visited cities such as Memphis, Indiana, and Phoenix to name a few.

Day one consists of a screening of the movie “Won’t Back Down” featuring Academy Award Nominee, Viola Davis (The Help), immediately followed by a networking reception and opportunity to discuss the education reform issues addressed in the film.

Day two features a panel discussion comprised of area business and education leaders sharing ideas regarding education reform and how best to align the workforce needs of industry with K-12 , post-secondary, and higher education.  Topics to be discussed include, The Importance of Pre-K and Early Childhood Education, and How to Achieve a Ready to Work and Engaged Workforce.

Registration for this event is free and due to limited seating we encourage you to register before the event.  For a complete listing of panel participants please view the attached agenda; to register click on the link below.  Also, included in your “free” registration on Thursday, January 24th are popcorn, drinks, and hors d’ oeuvres and breakfast and lunch are included on Friday, January 25th.  Thanks and we look forward to seeing you next week.

Categories Accountability, Alabama, ALEC, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization, Unions

NYC’s Biggest Tutoring Company Under Investigation

By dianeravitch
January 22, 2013 //
6

Ah, those private companies sure know how to do it right, don’t they?

In New York City, the city’s biggest provider of tutoring services is under investigation for inflated bills and other little financial issues. Since 2006, the company has collected $87 million from the city.

The tutoring company was founded in 2005 by a 22-year-old college graduate. The firm has been investigated and sanctioned for previous financial misbehavior but the city Department of Education, controlled by Mayor Bloomberg, awarded it a new contract last November. The City Comptroller refuses to honor the contract.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, For-Profit, New York City, Privatization, Testing

The Corporate Reform Movement Vs. Dr. MLK

By dianeravitch
January 21, 2013 //
1

Reader Mike Dixon commented on a post about Martin Luther King Jr.‘s definition of the purpose of education:

A cynical person might suspect that corporate education reform is intended to promote exactly what MLK warned about.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration, Testing

Oregon Accuses Online Charter Founders of $20 million Scam

By dianeravitch
January 20, 2013 //
15

The state of Oregon accuses two men of scamming the taxpayers by inflating enrollment figures in their online charter schools.

The schools–at least ten of them–were opened in conjunction with local school boards.

Apparently no one was supervising their claims.

The state wants the pair to repay $17 million plus nearly $3 million in costs and damages.

This is the danger of deregulation. There may be superintendents who would steal if they had the opportunity but they are watched by too many eyes. Maybe they get away with some thousands, but never millions.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, On-Line Education, Privatization

Parents, Beware! Is Your Child for Sale?

By dianeravitch
January 19, 2013 //
41

This appeared on the New York City parent blog:

NYC Public School Parents
Independent voices of New York City public school parents
FRIDAY, JANUARY 18, 2013

Parents beware! NY and eight other states plan to share your child’s confidential school records with private corporations without your consent!

New York is one of five states that have agreed to share confidential NYC student and teacher data in Phase I with the “Shared Learning Collaborative” or SLC, a project of the Gates Foundation.

The other states and districts in Phase I include North Carolina (Guilford Co.), Colorado (Jefferson Co.), Illinois (Unit 5 Normal and District 87 Bloomington) and Massachusetts (Everett). Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, and Louisiana are in Phase II, according to the Gates Foundation, intend to start piloting the system in 2013.

The data to be shared will include the names of students, their grades, test scores, disciplinary and attendance records, and likely race, ethnicity, free lunch and special education status as well.

These records are to be stored in a massive electronic data bank, being built by Wireless Generation, a subsidiary of News Corporation. News Corporation is owned by Rupert Murdoch and has been found to illegally violate the privacy of individuals in Great Britain and in the United States.

Over the next few months, the Gates Foundation plans to turn over all this personal data to another, as yet unnamed corporation, headed by Iwan Streichenberger, the former marketing director of a company called Promethean that sells whiteboards, based in Atlanta GA.

This new corporation intends to make this confidential student information available in turn to commercial enterprises to help them develop and market their “learning products.” This new corporation is supposed to be financially sustainable by 2016, which means either states, districts or vendors will have to pay for its upkeep and maintenance. All this is happening without parental knowledge or consent.

There are serious questions as to whether this plan complies with the federal law protecting student privacy, called FERPA (the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act), which allows states or districts to disclose students’ personally identifiable education records without parental consent only in very limited circumstances and under stringent conditions, none of which apply in this case.
Moreover, we have learned that this confidential information is to be put on a cloud managed by Amazon.com, with few if any protections against data leakage.

After our press conference with our attorney, Norman Siegel in October, the NY State Education Department finally released its contract with the Gates Foundation. As we feared, it only reaffirmed our concerns about the lack of privacy for children, the weak protections against data leakage, and the denial of the parental right to consent. Here is a letter from our attorneys expressing our concerns.

We believe that any state that enters into an agreement with the Shared Learning Collaborative, or its successor corporation, should at the very least be obligated to:

Release its contract with the Gates Foundation, notify all parents of the impending disclosure of their children’s confidential records, and provide them with the right to consent;

Hold public hearings for parents to be able to express their concerns about the plan’s potential to risk their children’s privacy, security and safety;

Explain how families can obtain relief if their children are harmed by improper use or accidental release of this information, including who will be held financially responsible;

Affirm that they will respect the privacy rights of public schoolchildren more than the interests of the Gates Foundation, News Corporation, or any other company or vendor with whom this confidential information may be shared.

Please see below; video of Khem Irby, parent activist in North Carolina, speaking before the Guilford school board about this issue last week.

Here is a fact sheet with this information you can download and distribute. You can also leave a comment on the Gates website here, if you think parents should have the right to consent.

For more information, please email us at info@classsizematters.org or call us at 212-674-7320.

Leonie Haimson at 1/18/2013

Categories For-Profit, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Parents, Students

The Business Model and the Bus Strike in NYC

By dianeravitch
January 19, 2013 //
14

New York City is now in the midst of a school bus strike, stranding more than 100,000 students.

As usual, each side blames the other for intransigence.

But there are a few facts that should be remembered for context.

The Bloomberg administration has had complete control of the school system since 2002 and negotiated all existing contracts.

In 2006, then Chancellor Joel Klein gave a contract for $15.8 million to business turnaround consultants Alvarez & Marsal to reorganize the transportation program. Some of the executives were paid $500 an hour (plus expenses). On January 31, 2007, the buses adopted the A&M schedule for the first time. It was the coldest day of the year. Thousands of children were left stranded on bitter-cold corners. It was chaos.

Chancellor Klein defended the choice of A&M, saying they had saved the city at least $50 million.

Presumably, this is the system that the mayor now finds intolerable and outrageously expensive.

Alvarez & Marsal were previously known for its work in St. Louis, where they ran the district like a business for one year, collected $5 million, and left, shortly before the state declared the district o be in such bad shape that the state took control.

A&M’s last school assignment was in DC, where Chancellor Kaya Henderson hired them to review test security procedures, though they had no experience doing that.

Categories Bloomberg, Michael, Corporate Reformers, For-Profit, Klein, Joel, New York City

Connecticut District Devoured by Edu-Vultures

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2013 //
45

Jonathan Pelto has unearthed a shocking story of a school district in Connecticut that is being pulled apart, privatized, and spit out by pseudo-saviors.

Windham, Connecticut, was in academic trouble so the state board of education appointed a “special master” to oversee school reform and the legislature appropriated $1 million per year extra. The district of 3,500 students has many who are impoverished and/or non-English-speaking.

Of the $2 million allocated in the first two years, some $750,000 went for the salary and benefits of the “special master” and his personal staff. More money went for consultants. Charters will open , one run by a group with the amazingly candid name “Our Piece of the Pie.” Among their sterling credentials: they run a charter school with six (6) students.

It is not clear that any of the new money will directly benefit students, such as, hiring another social worker or providing after-school programs.

Is anyone in Connecticut paying attention? Does anyone care?

Categories Budget Cuts, Connecticut, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization

Equity Investors See Big Profit$$ in Education

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2013 //
14

This is the end game of the current reform movement: financializing public spending on education.

Education is now seen as an emerging market, ripe for the picking.

Time to get in on the ground floor.

You don’t need to know anything about education.

What an opportunity!

Categories Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization

Maine Rejects Gulen Charter School

By dianeravitch
January 11, 2013 //
25

I wrote earlier that the governor of Maine was angry about the rejection of four of five charter applications by the state authorizing committee. He said he wished they would just “go away.” Two of those rejected charters were for-profit online corporations that have hired well-connected lobbyists, their usual method of operation. A third was a Gulen charter, here described by Sharon Higgins, who runs a website called “Charter School Scandals” and follows the expansion of the Gulen network.

Sharon writes:

“One of the rejected schools, Queen City Academy Charter School, was a Gulen charter school. It did not take long after Maine established its charter school law for Gulenists to try to open one of their charter schools.

Click to access QueenCityAcademyCharterSchool.pdf

The Gulen movement advanced their US activities into Maine last year. They hosted their first state capitol event for politicians last spring and have already taken at least one group of Maine lawmakers (plus spouses) to Turkey for their standard dog and pony show — a complementary trip that delivers a sustained dose of biased information delivery, concentrated lobbying, and constant ingratiation mixed with sightseeing and periodic visits to Gulenist institutions.
http://www.maine.gov/tools/whatsnew/index.php?topic=Portal+News&id=368790&v=article2011
http://tinyurl.com/anw59r9

The lead applicant for the QCA charter school was also the outreach coordinator for the organization that sponsored the capitol event and who met with Governor LePage last spring. Other QCA founders have been involved with a Gulen charter school in Massachusetts for the past six years. There are lots and lots of the usual Gulen movement “web of organization” connections.

Very, very heavy marketing on behalf of Turkey and Turkish culture has been taking place all across the US for the past 13 years or so (including at the Gulen charter schools). It is definitely not by happenstance and is not being done by just any group, nor by any random assortment of Turkish people. It is the coordinated work of individuals who are Fethullah Gulen “inspired.”
http://turkishinvitations.weebly.com/gulenist-non-profits.html

Members of the Gulen movement are heavily involved with trying to help advance Fethullah Gulen’s vision of Turkey becoming a powerful global figure once again. One of Lesley Stahl’s interview subjects in her 60 Minutes report — and the only Gulen movement observer/critic in Turkey who wasn’t too afraid to be interviewed — assessed this group as a personality cult.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57433131/u.s-charter-schools-tied-to-powerful-turkish-imam/?tag=contentMain;cbsCarousel

Whichever way the Gulen movement should be most accurately classified, at the very least it is a group which is widely acknowledged to be secretive as well as extremely controversial in Turkey. Oh yeah, and it is operating the largest network of charter schools in the United States with taxpayers’ money (over $400M/year at this point). If efforts in Maine and Virginia are eventually successful, two more states will be added to the 26 where Gulen charter schools are operating. Hizmet (how members refer to themselves) constantly talks about the importance of “dialogue” but it will NOT engage in a frank one with the American public. A broader exposure, full recognition, and a solid grasp of this situation, along with a heightened level of discussion and analysis, is needed asap!”

Categories Charter Schools, For-Profit, International, On-Line Education
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