To no one’s surprise, the latest Ohio report card shows that charter schools perform about the same as public schools. They actually show less value-added growth than the state’s traditional public schools, but are about the same as the Big 8, the urban districts. Remember that charters are touted as a silver bullet. The evidence accumulates that they are not. They extract money from public schools, perform no better, and are leading to what: a dual school system, with both systems publicly funded, one regulated, the other deregulated. In Ohio, charters are especially obnoxious because many operate for-profit, not for better education, not for kids.
Archives for category: For-Profit
Governor Nathan Deal of Georgia is supporting a constitutional amendment to create a commission to approve charter schools despite the objection of local school boards. This proposal was drafted by the rightwing ALEC organization, which is heavily funded by big corporations and counts 2,000 state legislators among its members.
This is the statement issued by the Georgia Federation of Teachers about the constitutional amendment that would curtail the powers of local school boards:
Children, Not Profits, Are Our Priority
Georgia Federation of Teachers President Verdaillia Turner
on the Charter School Amendment
The Charter School Amendment is not about supporting parents or student achievement. It is about granting the governor, lieutenant governor and speaker unprecedented power over billions of local and state tax dollars via creating a new state agency which will control billions of tax dollars for private interests. This agency would be appointed by the governor and accountable only to the governor. This agency would siphon precious tax dollars away from 1.7 million Georgia school children. It would support and fatten special schools for select people by exacerbating class and racial segregation. The Charter School Amendment is about “who chooses and who loses.”
Children, not profits, are our priority. We agree with Georgia’s State School Superintendent, Dr. John Barge. Until all of Georgia’s schools are financed appropriately, and students and teachers are no longer furloughed, it is unconscionable to fund a new state agency or support the objectives of the Charter School Amendment. The money for these special “for profit” schools will create a dual state school system and will cost Georgia’s taxpayers billions of dollars.
While the powers at the state capitol deceive the public by pushing for less government, they are creating more government via another state agency to add to the 128 state agencies that already exist. And while the powers at the state capitol deceive the public and claim that they support local control, they are attempting to take local control away from locally elected school boards, the men and women most accountable to the public, by pushing this amendment. And while the powers at the state capitol claim that this amendment is about expanding parental choice and helping students achieve, they deceive the public by taking over 6 billion dollars from public schools and setting up Georgia’s citizens for an educational Enron encounter. Over 70 school districts are operating with a deficit. At least 4 school districts are broke, and over 20 school districts are still furloughing teachers and students. Parents already have a choice. Local boards of education may and do grant charters. And if a board denies a charter petition, the Georgia Department of Education has an appeal process. The only “choice” as per this amendment is the choice to finance private schools at the public’s expense!
If we can’t trust the state with Medicare, transportation, or to use dollars earmarked for the foreclosed homes our families and students need, why would we trust the state with our children?
This amendment is not about charters, achievement, or parental choice. It is about giving five people who will only be accountable to the governor, free range unprecedented control and power over our billions of tax dollars. And it is about big profits for private interests on the backs of our children and at the expense of Georgia’s taxpayers.
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Georgia Federation of Teachers
(404) 315-0222
A reader writes, referring to Muskegon Heights, Michigan:
The for-profit company that is operating the entire school system near me fired all the teachers and hired new ones back at half price. I can’t wait to see how this is going to work. I have heard that teachers are walking off the job at the end of the day. Cheaper is just not always better.
A reader sees how the pieces of the reform movement fit together:
I think that all the double-speak is just to divert attention away from the major process of dismantling education that has been taking place across the country, and the smoke and mirrors is to conceal the intention to ultimately declare brick and mortar schools obsolete and teachers expendable and unnecessary. Effectively, the goal is to not have teachers anymore.
One online teacher I work with put it this way recently, “We’re just glorified graders now.” Honestly, for a teacher, there is no glory when your job boils down to just grading. But politicians, corporate reformers and companies like Pearson and K-12 seem to think that education can be reduced to presenting material on a screen and testing, and that they can train virtually anyone to be graders.
Actually, online, you can set it up so that tests are self-administered and automatically generate grades, so currently instructors are grading papers, class discussions, group projects, participation, etc. and I can see how that might one day be considered superfluous to the powers that be.
I forgot the critical link, now inserted.
A lawsuit in Virginia, where the K12 for-profit virtual schools corporation is based, has brought out some dirty linen.
Among the allegations are that K12 relies upon churn to produce high revenues and that some teachers have a class size of 400 students.
Follow the links and read the document. It’s fascinating and alarming.
This is the scam that Jeb Bush and Bob Wise are promoting as 21st century learning. They call it personalization and customization. Their “Ten Elements” for digital learning urges states to deregulate these for-profit schools completely, to allow them free rein to recruit students and use uncertified teachers. They even say that these corporations should not be required to have an office in the state where they open a virtual school.
This is education reform.
Follow the money.
If you happen to be in New Orleans this Saturday September 22, you won’t want to miss this fascinating panel discussion about “The Education Experiment: Petri Dish Reform in New Orleans and Louisiana.”
And even if you can’t get there for the panel discussion, open the link and see what they are talking about.
New Orleans is the first American city to wipe out public education and replace it with a charter system (80% of the students are in charters). Louisiana has passed legislation that will transfer $2 billion in public fund away from public schools to voucher schools.
Pay attention.
Some of the tests that Chicago teachers complained about, the tests on which their evaluations would depend, the tests at the heart of the strike—are administered by a subsidiary of Fox News.
Media Matters, a public-interest watchdog, pointed out that Fox News aired 89 segments about the strike in a one-week period without disclosing the financial ties between Fox News and Wireless Generation, both of which are part of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation empire.
Full disclosure might also imply the need to disclose that Murdoch donates significant sums of money to charter schools and to Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst.
Then there is the fact that Joel Klein heads the education division of News Corporation. Klein is a member of Jeb Bush’s board and chairman of the Broad Center Board, and Rhee is on the Broad board, and so is Wendy Kopp, and so is her husband, and so is Margaret Spellings …
Such a tangled web of relationships, and all devoted to the same purposes: privatizing the nation’s public schools, selling technology to replace teachers, weakening unions and eliminating any rights that teachers have or had.
The Center for Media and Democracy keeps a careful watch on the activities of ALEC, the ultra-conservative organization of state legislators. One of ALEC’s model law is a “parent trigger” bill.
The new film “Won’t Back Down” pulls together the threads of corporate backing for the privatization of public education.
No surprise here. The biggest of the for-profit virtual school corporations, K12, has as many as 275 students to one teacher, according to this report in Florida.
This is what is described by promoters of the “Ten Elements” of digital learning as personalized, customized learning for the 21st century. Others might call it a profitable scam.
Remember P.T. Barnum said that there is a sucker born every minute. Someone else said that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the human race.
K12 proves the cynics right.
A reader from Maine writes:
I think you’re right to feel paranoid–Sometimes they really are out to get you!
One thing that is starting to get some notice, but is still too far below the radar, is that while the state’s pile on more and more restrictive and demanding requirements for public schools, simultaneously they are pushing for reducing or eliminating those requirements for charters and virtual charters. As the Portland Press Herald noted in its expose of the LePage administration’s virtual charter games in Maine:
Digital education companies also have something less than an arm’s-length relationship with [Jeb] Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education, the organization [Maine’s Education] Commissioner Bowen has leaned on in developing administration policy.
The foundation’s Digital Learning Now! initiative receives funding from Pearson, K12, textbook publishing giants Houghton Mifflin-Harcourt and McGraw-Hill, and tech companies such as Apple, Intel and Microsoft, and digital curriculum developers Apex Learning and IQ Innovations iQity. The initiative – whose 10-point strategy has been formally embraced by the LePage administration – focuses on removing legal barriers to public financing of virtual classes.
The “10 elements” include dozens of specific policy directives, including for states to:
• eliminate restrictions on online student-to-teacher ratios, enrollments, class sizes, budgets, providers, or the number of credits a student can earn;
• not regulate “seat time” in classes, or require that online providers, their teachers, or their governing board members be located in the state;
• avoid assessment of “inputs such as teacher certification, programmatic budgets and textbook reviews” and focus instead on “student learning data” from digital testing;
• fund digital learning “through the public per-pupil funding formula;”
• provide all students with access to “any and all” approved online providers;
• require students to take online courses in order to graduate;
• pay for the online classes of all students, including homeschoolers and those in private schools;
• ensure by law that full-time virtual schools are available for all students;
• deprive school districts of “the ability to deny access to approved virtual schools and individual online courses” even as they pay for their students to use them out of their per-pupil budget allocation.
“One of the striking things about these reforms is the extent to which they remove control of the schools from democratic governance and turn them over to corporate decision-making and appointed bodies,” says Alex Molnar, research professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder’s National Education Policy Center. “Education policy is now being made to some degree by people who have a financial stake in what they are making policy about.”
Digital education companies also have something less than an arm’s-length relationship with Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education, the organization Commissioner Bowen has leaned on in developing administration policy.
The foundation’s Digital Learning Now! initiative receives funding from Pearson, K12, textbook publishing giants Houghton Mifflin-Harcourt and McGraw-Hill, and tech companies such as Apple, Intel and Microsoft, and digital curriculum developers Apex Learning and IQ Innovations iQity. The initiative – whose 10-point strategy has been formally embraced by the LePage administration – focuses on removing legal barriers to public financing of virtual classes.
The “10 elements” include dozens of specific policy directives, including for states to:
• eliminate restrictions on online student-to-teacher ratios, enrollments, class sizes, budgets, providers, or the number of credits a student can earn;
• not regulate “seat time” in classes, or require that online providers, their teachers, or their governing board members be located in the state;
• avoid assessment of “inputs such as teacher certification, programmatic budgets and textbook reviews” and focus instead on “student learning data” from digital testing;
• fund digital learning “through the public per-pupil funding formula;”
• provide all students with access to “any and all” approved online providers;
• require students to take online courses in order to graduate;
• pay for the online classes of all students, including homeschoolers and those in private schools;
• ensure by law that full-time virtual schools are available for all students;
• deprive school districts of “the ability to deny access to approved virtual schools and individual online courses” even as they pay for their students to use them out of their per-pupil budget allocation.
“One of the striking things about these reforms is the extent to which they remove control of the schools from democratic governance and turn them over to corporate decision-making and appointed bodies,” says Alex Molnar, research professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder’s National Education Policy Center. “Education policy is now being made to some degree by people who have a financial stake in what they are making policy about.”
(See: http://www.pressherald.com/news/virtual-schools-in-maine_2012-09-02.html?searchterm=K12)
And in Louisiana, Bobby Jinal’s administration has come in for similar scrutiny: http://cenlamar.com/2012/09/12/bobby-jindal-and-john-whites-voucher-scam-violates-the-louisiana-state-constitution-and-they-know-it/
The answer is clear–All of the charters want to paid on a fully-burdend per-pupil basis, i.e., at the same rate as the public schools. But they want to reduce their overhead to maximize their profits. So, the game is not about improving education by providing better schools, it’s about a bait and switch to transfer tax money to corporate profits.
Diane Ravitch's blog 