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Peter Greene: NC Charter Schools Want Courts to Rule That They Are Not “State Actors”

By dianeravitch
January 9, 2023 //
13

Charter schools have managed to occupy an unusual spot in the spectrum of educational institutions: When it’s time to get public funding, they insist they are “public schools.” But in court cases where charters were fighting to be exempt from state laws governing employment practices or financial accountability, they insist they are not “state actors.” It is logically impossible to be both a public school but not a state actor.

In a current court case, a North Carolina charter chain wants the courts to declare that its schools are not state actors because they enforce policies for girls’ dress that is inconsistent with state and federal law.

Public schools are state actors. In effect, this charter chain wants to be declared “not a public school” even as it continues to be publicly funded. Why? It wants to preserve its right to ignore state and federal laws against discrimination.

Peter Greene explains the background of this case:

In the regularly pro-choice Wall Street Journal, Baker Mitchell and Robert Spencer want to complain about a court decision declaring that their charter schools are, in fact, public schools. This, they warn, “imperils the charter school movement.” Their complaint is a big pile of deep fried baloney.

The case that prompted this whinging

One of the charter schools operated by Roger Bacon Academy was sued by some parents over a dress code requiring girls to wear skirts (or skorts–but none of that pants-wearing stuff, ladies). Such a big deal. Who knew?

“We’re a school of choice. We’re classical in our curriculum and very traditional. I believe that the more of the traditional things you have in place, the more they tend to reinforce each other,” he said in a phone interview. “We want boys to be boys and girls to be girls and have mutual respect for each other. We want boys to carry the umbrella for girls and open doors for them … and we want to start teaching that in grammar school.”

RBA is owned and operated by Baker Mitchell, Jr., one of the titans of charter profiteering. Back in 2014, Marian Wang profiled the “politically-connected businessman who celebrates the power of the free market,” and how he perfected the business of starting nonprofit charter schools and then having those schools lease their buildings, equipment, programs, etc. from for-profit companies owned and operated by Baker Mitchell, Jr. Mitchell (now in his early eighties) thinks the rule is great:

The case bounced up through the various court levels until it landed in front of the full panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which declared that the rule was junk and had to be thrown out. Not a worthwhile call-back to what one dissenting judge called “the age of chivalry” as the majority noted such an age was also the age “when men could assault their spouses” and that chivalry “may not have been a bed of roses for those forced to lie in it.”

Nor did the court accept the argument that girls were still getting good grades. “We cannot excuse discrimination because its victims are resilient enough to persist in the face of such unequal treatment.”

So what’s the big deal? (Spoiler alert: that state actor thing)

Mitchell and Spencer are not whining about the loss of their ability to require girls to show their legs. They protest that the policy was created by parents; well, so was the lawsuit, so that hardly seems like a useful point. And it’s not the main concern,

The case hinged on the question of whether or not charter schools are “state actors” aka actual public schools. The court said, “Yes, they are.”

Mitchell and Spencer complain that no court has ever done such a thing and therefor: The Fourth Circuit’s finding appears to have been based on little more than the convention of calling charters “public charter schools” and their being mostly funded by public sources.

This is kind of hilarious, because the “convention” of calling these school public was created entirely, and purposefully, by the charter industry and its supporters. They have insisted loudly and often that charter schools are absolutely public schools, and have engaged in uncountable arguments with anyone who dares to say otherwise. Of course, they have also frequently insisted that they are private businesses when it’s convenient for fending off state scrutiny or grabbing PPP pandemic relief money.

And despite Mitchell and Spencer’s apocalyptic warnings, you know who applauded the court’s ruling?

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. The importance of this case could not be overstated, as it was the first time a federal appellate court considered whether public charter school students deserve the same constitutional civil rights protections as district public school students. The en banc court clearly and unequivocally affirmed that charter schools are public schools and, accordingly, must be bound by the US Constitution. Moreover, public charter school students have the same constitutional and civil rights as their district public school peers.

Galen Sherwin, ACLU senior staff attorney, observed that the ruling was important because The court rightly recognizes that ruling otherwise would leave states free to establish parallel, privately operated public school systems in a constitution-free zone, free to implement race segregation, religious discrimination, etc.

So what are they really, really upset about?

The tell comes a little further down the piece.
The ruling comes at a time when the charter-school movement is growing. Oklahoma’s attorney general recently issued a legal opinion stating that religious organizations must be allowed to operate charter schools in the Sooner State. A key aspect of the opinion was a finding that charter schools are not state actors and, therefore, the Constitution’s Establishment Clause doesn’t prohibit the inculcation of religious values, as it does in government-run schools.

If charter schools are state actors, then that might get in the way of expanding religious charters. And sure enough– we find amicus briefs filed by Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Arlington VA, Notre Dame Law School Religious Liberty Clinic, the Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty, and the Religious Freedom Institute. “These experts,” say the writers, confusing advocacy and lobbying with expertise, say the Fourth Circuit’s ruling would undercut charter schools.

Well, no. They would undercut the extension of private religious organizations into a sweet, sweet chance to get their hands on public tax dollars while still enjoying unregulated freedom to indoctrinate some students into their religion while also discriminating against whatever students they choose to discriminate against in a taxpayer-funded Constitution-free zone.

Are we done yet?

Of course not. The school has petitioned the Supreme Court to hear their appeal. It invokes the 14th Amendment and features this kind of flag-waving:


North Carolina charter schools—like many throughout the Nation—build upon a critical insight: Empowering private entities to operate publicly funded schools with minimal government oversight supercharges educational innovation and expands parental choice. The decision below profoundly threatens this model.

“Supercharges innovation.” Sure. Making girls wear skirts is one hell of a supercharged innovation. My usual offer stands–name one educational innovation that has come out of the modern charter school sector.

Mitchell and Spencer want you to know that damn ACLU is behind this case, but they aren’t exactly being represented by a Mom and Pop firm. Aaron Streett is an attorney with Baker Botts, a multinational law firm (where both Amy Coney Barrett and Ted Cruz once worked), and that he’s the chair of their Supreme Court and Constitutional Law Group. Streett says that the majority opinion “contradicts Supreme Court precedent on state action…and limits the ability of parents to choose the best education for their children.”

The argument is simple enough–we are not a public school, so we should get to do whatever the hell we want (and be paid by taxpayer dollars while we do it).

It’s a tough call for the charter biz–if they aren’t public schools, then at this point they really aren’t much different from private voucher schools, so what’s the point of them? But if they want to market themselves as public schools, they can damn well operate under public school rules.

Who knows if SCOTUS will hear this, or what they will decide. But regardless of how things end up, it looks like the charter movement’s days of being able to have things both ways may be coming to an end.

Kevin Welner, who is both a lawyer and a professor of education policy at the University of Colorado at Boulder, wrote about these issues on Valerie Strauss’s Answer Sheet blog last June, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Maine could not exclude two religious schools from state funding when it provided public funding to other private schools, even though the religious schools openly discriminate against LGBT students, families, and staff, as well as non-Christians. The case is called Carson V. Makin.

Welner suggests that the Maine case may erase the line between charter schools and vouchers.

Welner wrote:

If charter schools are state actors, they cannot engage in religious teaching or discrimination. The Peltier litigation did not, however, involve any claim by the school that its sexist dress code arose out of protected religious beliefs. If religious-liberty claims were to be asserted around a comparable policy adopted by a charter school run by a religious organization, the state-action inquiry should be very similar, if not identical, and the charter school should be prohibited from engaging in discrimination.

But as today’s Carson v. Makin decision illustrates, the introduction of free-exercise protections could greatly complicate the overall analysis. If courts side with a church-run charter school, finding that state attempts to restrict religiously infused teachings and practices at the school are an infringement on the church’s free-exercise rights, then the circle is complete: Charter school laws have become voucher laws.

If the Supreme Court hears the Peltier case, if it decides that charter schools are not state actors, if charters may discriminate against girls, LGBT students, and non-Christians, then as Welner says, charters are no different from vouchers. But if they are not state actors, then charter schools are not public schools. But they are free to discriminate against any group, without regard to federal law. And they are free to teach religious doctrine and to close their schools to non-believers. States will then be directly funding schools that teach religious zealotry and openly engage in discrimination.

A loss for American democracy, but a victory for Donald Trump, who appointed three religious extremists to the Supreme Court; Mitch McConnell, who refused to allow President Obama to fill Justice Scalia’s empty seat on the Court after the Justice died in March 2016 (on the absurd grounds that it was too close to a presidential election), as well as his rush to allow Trump to name Amy Coney Barrett to fill Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat only weeks before the 2020 election; the far-right wing Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society, which selected the judicial candidates for Trump. And while it may be impolitic to say so, I blame Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg for refusing to resign her seat in 2014 or 2015, when Obama would certainly have been able to replace her. She had had four bouts with pancreatic cancer, and good reason to step down and give Obama a chance to replace her. Instead she stayed on and died at age 87, gambling that Hillary Clinton would replace Obama. She lost her bet, and the nation has a Supreme Court that is imposing a deeply reactionary agenda.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, For-Profit, North Carolina, Religion

Tom Ultican: The “Science of Reading”=Profits & Propaganda

By dianeravitch
January 3, 2023 //
52

For almost two centuries, the debate about teaching reading has raged. Not every day, but in spurts. It started in Horace Mann’s day in the early 19th century, and periodically flared up again, as in the 1950s, when Rudolf Flesch wrote a national bestseller called Why Johnny Can’t Read, excoriating “look-say” books like the Dick & Jane series and calling for a revival of phonics.

In 1967, the literacy expert Jeanne Chall wrote the definitive book, called Learning How to Read: The Great Debate, which was supposed to end the debate. It didn’t. She recommended early phonics, followed by emphasis on engaging children’s literature. Chall warned against extremes, which would lead to extreme reactions. In the 1980s, the “whole language” movement swept the reading field, led by anti-phonics crusaders. A reaction set in, as Chall warned it would. No Child Left Behind mandated phonics instruction in 2002, based on the findings of the National Reading Panel.

I covered most of this contested ground in my 2000 book Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform. My book came out before NCLB was passed, so it did not cover the post-1999 developments. Chall warned against going to extremes between the pro-phonics and anti-phonics ideologies. She said we had to avoid extremes, yet here we are again, with phonics now bearing the mantle of “the science of reading.”

I favor phonics, as Chall did, and agree with her that it should be taught early and as needed. Some children absolutely need it, some don’t. Nonetheless, I maintain that there is no “science of reading,” as there is no science of teaching any other subject. There is no “science” of teaching history or mathematics or writing. There are better and worse ways of teaching, but none is given the mantle of “science.” Calling something “science” is a way of saying “my approach is right and yours is wrong.”

Tom Ultican writes in this post about the cheerleaders and critics of “the science of reading.” He is especially critical of journalist Emily Hanford, who has been the loudest advocate of “the science of reading.”

He begins:

The Orwellian labeled science of reading (SoR) is not based on sound science. It more accurately should be called “How to Use Anecdotes to Sell Reading Products.” In 1997, congress passed legislation calling for a reading study. From Jump Street, the establishment of the National Reading Panel (NRP) was a doomed effort. The panel was given limited time for the study (18 months) which was a massive undertaking conducted by twenty-one unpaid volunteers. The NRP fundamentally did a meta-analysis in five reading domains while ignoring 10 other important reading domains. In other words, they did not review everything and there was no new research. They simply searched for reading studies and averaged the results to give us “the science of reading.”

It has been said that “analysis is to meta-analysis as physics is to meta-physics.”

Ultican reviews the recent history, starting with the report of the National Reading Panel (NRP) at the beginning of this century. He describes it as the work of dedicated professionals that has been distorted. What he doesn’t know is that the panel was selected by Reid Lyon of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. He believed passionately in phonics, as did a majority of the NRP. After the election of 2000, Lyon was President George W. Bush’s top reading advisor. The NRP final report strongly recommended phonics, decoding, phonemic awareness, etc. Given the membership of the panel, this was not surprising.

One member of the NRP wrote a stinging dissent: elementary school principal Joanne Yatvin of Oregon, a past president of the National Council of Teachers of English. Yatvin complained that the NRP was not balanced and that it did not contain a single elementary teacher of reading.

In 2003, Yatvin wrote in Education Week (cited above):

Out of the 15 people appointed, nine were reading researchers, two were university administrators with no background in reading research or practice, one was a teacher- educator, one a certified public accountant (and parent), one was a middle school teacher, and one an elementary principal (me). When one researcher resigned after the first panel meeting, the NICHD declined my request that he be replaced by an elementary-level teacher and left that position unfilled. As a result, the panel included no teacher of early reading instruction.

Moreover, the science faction of the panel could hardly be considered balanced. All were experimental scientists; all were adherents of the discrete-skills model of reading; and some of them had professional ties to the NICHD. With so many distinguished reading researchers available in the United States, it is difficult to understand why the NICHD could not find one or two involved in descriptive research or with a different philosophy of reading.

A balanced group that included classroom teachers of early reading would have produced a nuanced report. The NRP report became the basis for the $6 billion-dollar “Reading First” portion of No Child Left Behind. An evaluation of the program by the federal government found that more time was devoted to reading instruction because of the NRP recommendations, but there was no statistically significant improvement in students’ reading comprehension.

The death knell for Reading First, however, was not the evaluation of its results but charges that some of those responsible for the program had conflicts of interest and were steering lucrative contracts to corporations in which they had a financial stake. The Department of Education’s Inspector General substantiated these charges. Kenneth Goodman, a major figure in the whole-language movement, released an overview of the scandals in the Reading First program.

Be sure to read the critiques of “the science of reading” quoted by Ultican, especially those by Nancy Bailey and Paul Thomas. Today, even the New York Times and Education Week write uncritically about “the science of reading,” as if it were established fact, which it is not.

It seems we are doomed to repeat the history we don’t know.

Categories Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Literacy

National Education Policy Center: The Outcomes of For-Profit Charter Schools in Ohio

By dianeravitch
December 19, 2022 //
5

Josh Cowen of Michigan State University reviewed a report by the rightwing Thomas B. Fordham Institute about for-profit charter schools in Ohio. It was published by the National Education Policy Center.

The summary:

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute recently published For-Profit Charter Schools: An Eval- uation of their Spending and Outcomes. The report examines academic outcomes in Ohio’s nonprofit and for-profit charter schools; in addition, it explores whether differences in contracted services in for-profits appear to correlate with differences in their outcomes. Although the report finds that charters generally have higher academic outcomes relative to traditional public schools, for-profit schools perform slightly lower academically than their nonprofit counterparts, and they perform worse than traditional schools in some areas as well. In addition, the report finds that for-profits typically contract for either staffing or other services and that those contracting for staffing perform especially poorly. Based on these findings, the report includes cautions about overregulation of for-profit charters but also raises concerns about virtual and charter schools that contract out for nearly all services. Contrary to the report’s enthusiastic Foreword, written by Fordham executives Amber Northern and Michael Petrilli and containing implications that somewhat vary from those in the report’s body, there is little in the report to remove skepticism from the debate over for-profit status. Rather, the report includes negative findings such as fewer students in for-profit charters earning diplomas, and it reinforces concerns about for-profit schools— particularly those that contract out for staff. In addition, the report is limited in its focus on only Ohio, which has substantially more transparency than many states require for school choice options. As a result, the report offers little to inform policy and practice in dissimilar or nationwide contexts.
http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/for-profit-charters

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Ohio

U.S. Senate Rejects GOP Effort to Overturn Biden Administration Charter Regulations

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2022 //
10

Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina offered a resolution to overturn the Biden administration’s new regulations on federal funding of charter schools. The vote was 49-49, strictly on party lines. Even charter school supporters like Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and Senator Michael Bennett of Colorado voted to sustain the new rules.

Every Republican voted to reject the rules. The charter lobby was not at all pleased.

The Network for Public Education has worked very hard to persuade the Department of Education and Congress to regulate the federal Charter Schools Program. When Betsy DeVos was Secretary of Education, there was no chance that the Department would try to regulate the $440 million handed out to new charter schools every year. The federal government was the single biggest contributor to new charter schools.

NPE published reports about the large number of charter schools that closed or never opened. It wrote about for-profit charters that were enjoying federal largesse. It drew attention to charter school scandals, including white flight academies subsidized by federal funds.

Not until the Biden administration took office did anyone in the Department take seriously its responsibility to oversee federal funding of charters.

What do the new regulations require? What did every single Republican Senator try to block? We’re they upset about the limits on for-profit operators? Or did they object to transparency and accountability for federally funded charters?

NPE executive director Carol Burris explained in this article published at Valerie Strauss’s Answer Sheet blog:

For those who have long advocated for overhauling the CSP program, here are the significant gains.

Schools managed by for-profits will have a difficult time securing CSP grants and, in some cases, will be excluded from funding.

If an applicant has or will have a contract with a for-profit management company (or a “nonprofit management organization operated by or on behalf of a for-profit entity”), they must provide extensive information, including a copy or description of the contract, comprehensive leadership personnel reporting and the identification of possible related party transactions. Real estate contracts must be reported, and “evergreen contracts” in which there is automatic contract renewal are prohibited.

The school cannot share legal, accounting or auditing services with the for-profit. The state entity that awards the grant must publish the for-profit management contract between the awardee and the school.
The final regulations also include the reporting and exposure of the for-profit’s related entities. The Network for Public Education recommended the addition of “related entities” in its comments to the department. Our report, “Chartered for Profit,” explains how for-profit owners create separate corporations with different names to mask the complete control of the for-profit over operations of the school.

Finally, the applicant must assure that “the [for-profit] management company does not exercise full or substantial control over the charter school,” thereby barring any charter school operated by a for-profit with a “sweeps contract” from obtaining CSP funds.

There will be greater transparency and accountability for charter schools, State Entities, and CMOs that apply for grants.

This is probably the most underreported win for those who support charter school reform.

Transparency gains include:

• An assurance that the grantee holds a public hearing on the proposed or expanded charter school. These hearings must be well advertised and include information on how the school will increase diversity and not promote segregation. Schools are obligated to reach out to the community to encourage attendance and then provide a summary of the hearing as part of the application. These public hearings are required of direct grantees and subgrantees — both SE and CMO.
• The publication of for-profit management contracts.
• The publication of the names of awardee schools and their peer-reviewed applications by states and CMOs.
• A requirement that the school publish information for prospective parents, including fees, uniform requirements, disciplinary practices, transportation plans, and whether the school participates in the national free or reduced-price lunch program.

Accountability gains include:

• More substantial supervision by state entities of the schools that are awarded grants, including in-depth descriptions of how they will review applications, the peer review process they will use, and how they will select grantees for in-depth monitoring.
• Restrictions regarding the spending of grants by unauthorized schools. Charter schools not yet approved by an authorizer will be eligible to use planning grant funds; however, they cannot dip into any implementation funds until they are approved and have secured a facility. This new regulation will limit, though not prevent, all funding that goes to charter schools that never open.

Regulations to stop White-flight charters from receiving CSP funding and ensure the charter is needed in the community.

The final regulations are good, but not as strong as initially proposed.
One of the more controversial aspects of the new regulations was the need for the school to conduct a community impact analysis. The charter lobby focused on one example by which a school could show need (district over-enrollment) and used it as a rallying cry to garner opposition to the regulations. In the new regulations, the department clarifies that there are other ways to demonstrate need, including wait lists and offering a unique program. It also eliminated the need for the applicant to provide a district enrollment projection.

The community impact analysis is now called a needs analysis. That analysis must include evidence of community desire for the school; documentation of the school’s enrollment projection and how it was derived; a comparison of the demographics of the school with the area where the students are likely to be drawn; the projected impact of the school on racial and socio-economic district diversity; and an assurance that the school would not “hamper, delay or negatively affect” district desegregation efforts. Applicants would also have to submit their plan to ensure that the charter school does not increase racial segregation and isolation in the school district from which the charter would draw its students.

The department went to great pains to reassure applicants that schools in racially isolated districts would not need to show diversity (this straw man argument had been used by the charter lobby and even some editorial boards to fight the regulations, although the original rules had made that clear). Those schools that are unlikely to be diverse due to the school’s special mission would also have to submit an explanation.
Still, there are some concerns about unintended consequences of the regulations.

With the additional caveat regarding “special mission,” the department is trying to preserve grants to schools that are themed to promote, for example, Native American culture in an area where Native American students are a minority population in the district. That is understandable.
However, White-flight charter schools could skirt the regulation by arguing that their mission is to provide a Eurocentric, classical curriculum.

For example, charter schools opened by Hillsdale College — a small Christian college in Michigan that promotes a “classical” curriculum — are disproportionately White. These schools could claim that their mission appeals to students with European backgrounds and that the strong “anti-CRT” message in their “1776 curriculum” does not appeal to Black families. Although Hillsdale College does not take federal funds, Hillsdale charter schools do. We have identified nearly $7 million awarded to Hillsdale member charter schools up to April 2021. Newer schools have likely secured CSP grants as well.

Priority 2 — which encouraged charter/public school cooperation — was retained but categorized as “invitational” for the 2022 cycle.
The second straw man argument the National Alliance for Public Charters used to fuel their #backoff campaign on the regulations was the claim that charter/public school district cooperative projects were required. They were not. They were a priority, and priorities can be mandated, competitive (assigned a few points), or invitational (looked up favorably but no point value).

As I explained here, it is rare for a priority to be mandated. For example, of the six priorities for the 2022 State Entities grants, only one is required, which is that authorizers use best practices. The department now makes it clear that it is unlikely that charter/district cooperative activity will ever be a mandated priority while leaving the door open to it becoming a competitive priority after the 2022 award cycle.

All regulations, priorities and assurances go into effect for this 2022 grant cycle with one exception: Developer grant applicants, a small program in which individual schools apply, do not have to submit a needs analysis in 2022 only. That is because applications are due shortly.

Summary

Since 2019 when the Network for Public Education issued its reports on the federal Charter School Program, the program has come under increased congressional scrutiny. We have followed up by submitting letters to the department, often co-signed by other groups, demanding reform and exposing abuses of the program.

These new regulations are an essential first step in making sure that fewer tax dollars go to schools that never open, schools that quickly close, and for-profit operators. Unscrupulous individuals who used the program for their enrichment will find it more difficult to do so. State Entities that have pushed money out the door will now be forced to provide more oversight and supervision. And so they should. State Entities get 10 percent of every grant, representing millions of federal dollars, to use for such supervision.

We do not doubt that some applicants will still provide false information, as we found time and time again, but now as all peer-reviewed applications go online, groups such as ours will serve as watchdogs and report falsehoods and misrepresentations to the Office of the Inspector General.

And for all of the charter schools that are fronts for for-profit organizations, the Education Department just put a big sign on the door that says “you need not apply.”

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Democrats, Education Industry, For-Profit, Republicans

Today is the 10th Anniversary of the Sandy Hook Massacre

By dianeravitch
December 14, 2022 //
16

Ten years ago, a deranged young man blasted his way into the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. He killed 20 first-grade children and six staff members, including the principal, who tried to stop him at the school’s door.

The nation was stunned. President Obama wept. There was a widespread sense that this heinous act would lead to decisive action by Congress. It didn’t. The gun violence against children continues.

Why? The Republican Party has sworn allegiance to an extreme interpretation of the Second Amendment in which every person has the unfettered right to own and carry guns. and the Supreme Court, now securely in the hands of hard-right conservatives after Trump added three justices, is overturning long-standing limits on gun ownership. There are more guns than people in the U.S., and so far as conservatives are concerned, there is no need to restrict their availability and use (except in the halls of Congress, the Supreme Court, and other special places.)

Among the weapons used at Sandy Hook were a Bushmaster XM15-E2S and a Glock 20SF handgun. The killer first murdered his mother, who bought the guns and took him to firing ranges. When fist responders arrived, he killed himself.

Not long after the massacre of babies at Sandy Hook, the professional liars entered the scene. They said that there was no massacre. Everything we saw on television was staged, they said. The “parents” who were mourning were actually “crisis actors.” Someone sent me a link to a video purporting to show that Sandy Hook never happened; it was a hoax created to promote gun control legislation.

Alex Jones leapt on the story and repeatedly broadcast it to his many followers. Some of them harassed the families who had lost a child or a mother or a sister, even sending them death threats.

Alex Jones has this year been convicted of defamation and ordered to pay fines exceeding $1 billion. He moved his assets and declared bankruptcy.

There have been so many mass murders in the past decade that it’s impossible to remember them all. We remember the massacre of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, both because of the numbers and the heroic response of the survivors, who lobbied fiercely for gun control. Uvalde got our attention because of the number of children killed: 19, along with two teachers. And it got our attention because of the sheer incompetence of the law enforcement officers, who arrived on the scene by the hundreds and failed to enter the classrooms where the killer was for over an hour.

Of one thing we can be sure, there will be more mass killings of students. Uvalde will not be last. Schools now practice active shooter drills. Some teachers are armed. School security has been enhanced. Door locks are common.

But when the next killer pulls a gun out of his backpack or blasts through the entry with an assault weapon, children and staff will die. We will mourn them and their teachers as we have before. And then there will be another. And another.

Nothing will change until we enact strong gun control laws that limit access to guns. That won’t happen unless the voters elect people sworn to protect the lives of their children.

Categories Accountability, Connecticut, Cruelty, For-Profit, Fraud, Guns, Republicans

Public Citizen: Tax Big Oil!

By dianeravitch
November 3, 2022 //
33

Robert Weisman president of Public Citizen, explains why the price of gasoline is so high and what todo about it.

Being a multinational oil company looks like good work if you can get it:

  • Oil giant Chevron raked in $11.2 billion in profits from July through September.
  • Exxon did even better, making $19.7 billion in profits over just those three months — its most profitable quarter EVER.
  • In fact, the three top oil companies — Chevron, Exxon, and Shell — have more than tripled their profits compared to this time last year.

Again, we’re talking about profits. Not overall revenue. Sheer, unadulterated profits.

And it’s not like these companies, you know, pay Mother Nature for each barrel of oil they suck out of the ground. Or that they gave their rank-and-file workers mega-bonuses this year (unlike the excessive pay and stock options they lavish upon their executives.)

This is just plain old profiteering, pure and simple.

Big Oil is exploiting the global economic disruption and uncertainty caused by Russia’s war on Ukraine — along with recent cuts in oil production by OPEC that seem intentionally designed to destabilize things even further — to extract as much money out of all of our pockets as they can.

Meanwhile, oil prices fuel the inflation that is wreaking havoc on everyday Americans and the global economy. And the price of a gallon of gas is a major factor in how Americans vote, with Election Day right around the corner.

Today, President Biden publicly floated the idea of taxing Big Oil’s outlandish profits — something Public Citizen has been pushing the administration to do over the past year.

However, President Biden held out this kind of tax — known as a “windfall profits tax” — as a punishment only if oil companies don’t ramp up domestic production.

But ramping up domestic oil production is a bad idea for many reasons, including that more oil from U.S. lands will just be exported — as 29% of U.S. crude production currently is — denying any benefits to American consumers.

And the existential threat of climate change demands that human society move away from fossil fuels as quickly as possible, not that we let Big Oil extract even more oil out of the Earth and even more profits out of everyday consumers.

By the way, 80% of American voters — including 73% of Republicans — were in favor of a windfall profits tax on Big Oil even before President Biden’s announcement.

So there’s no need to manufacture counter-productive reasons to threaten to do something later that an overwhelming majority of Americans think we should be doing already.

It’s time to do some drilling of our own — deep into Big Oil’s overflowing pockets — by taxing the industry’s unjust, and unjustifiable, windfall profits and returning the money to the people.

Add your name as a citizen co-signer of our message to Congress:

American consumers need help. And somebody has to say “Enough is enough!” to Big Oil’s shameless profiteering. Pass legislation to tax the oil industry’s windfall profits now — not as a threat that will only entice them to drill more — and give that money back to hard-working, everyday Americans.

Click now to add your name.

Thanks for taking action.

For progress,

– Robert Weissman, President of Public Citizen


Public Citizen | 1600 20th Street NW | Washington DC 20009 |

Categories Accountability, Economy, For-Profit

Federal Audit of Federal Charter Schools Program Finds Waste, Fraud, and Abuse

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2022 //
11

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of the Inspector General conducted an in-depth audit of the federal Charter Schools Program, which was initiated in 1994 with a few million dollars by the Clinton administration. Thanks to astute lobbying by the charter industry, the modest program grew to $440 million a year with little or no accountability. Betsy DeVos pushed it aggressively to large charter chains, including for-profit chains.

You will be interested in this account of the audit, written by Valerie Strauss on her blog “The Answer Sheet” in the Washington Post, introducing an analysis by Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education.

This audit demonstrates the power and persistence of the Network for Public Education, a small but smart advocate for public schools. NPE operates with one full-time employee and a small number of part-time employees. Our work is motivated not by greed but by idealism and a passionate commitment to the common good. We believe in well-funded schools with experienced teachers for all children.

The introduction by by Strauss and the analysis by Burris has many links, but none transferred when I copied it. I copied some, but not all of them. I urge you to open the original and find the links.

Strauss begins:

The U.S. Education Department’s Office of Inspector General has released a new audit of the federal Charter School Program that found some alarming results about how charter school networks have used millions of dollars in funding. Among other things, the audit found that charter school networks and for-profit charter management organizations did not open anywhere near the number of charters they promised to open with federal funding. This piece looks at the new audit and what it tells us.


The reason this is not surprising is that investigations into the Charter School Programs by the Network for Public Education, an advocacy group that opposes the growth of charter schools, found that same problem, as well as others and reported it a few years ago. You can read my stories about their “Asleep at the Wheel” here and here. (The second report noted that the state with the most charter schools that never opened was Michigan, home to former education secretary Betsy DeVos, who has pushed to expand charter schools for decades.)


Charter schools are publicly funded but privately managed. The federal charter program, which began in 1994 with the aim of expanding high-quality charters, had bipartisan support for years, but many Democrats have pulled back from the movement, citing the fiscal impact on school districts and repeated scandals in the sector. The Biden administration is making some changes to the program in an effort to stop waste and fraud and provide more transparency to the operation of charters.


This piece was written by Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education and a former award-winning principal in New York. She has been chronicling the charter school movement and the standardized-test-based accountability movement on this blog for years. The Network for Public Education is an alliance of organizations that advocates for the improvement of public education and sees charter schools as part of a movement to privatize public education.


By Carol Burris


A new report issued by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) entitled “The Effectiveness of Charter School Programs in Increasing the Number of Charter Schools” documents how states, charter management organizations, and charter developers often make wildly exaggerated claims regarding the number of charter schools they will open or expand to secure large grants.

The OIG, an independent watchdog of the U.S. Department of Education (the Department), found that for grants issued between 2013 and 2016, only 51 percent of the schools promised by Charter School Programs (CSP) recipients opened or expanded.


The OIG audit also exposed the sloppy record keeping and weak oversight that characterize CSP operations. Since 2006, the department has paid a private corporation, WestEd, millions of dollars to compile, check and update CSP records. WestEd’s present CSP contract exceeds $12 million. In total, WestEd has active contracts with the U.S. Department of Education worth more than $27.6 million. Yet an alarming number of grant records could not be found when requested by the OIG auditors. And while the Biden administration is attempting to clean up and reform the CSP, according to the independent OIG, more work needs to be done.


What did the Office of the Inspector General audit?
The audit had three goals. The first was to describe how the department’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education tracked and reported the number of charter schools that opened and expanded using Charter School Program funds. A second goal was to determine whether CSP grant recipients actually delivered the number of charter schools they promised when they applied for their often multimillion dollar awards. Finally, the audit sought to determine how many schools were still open two years after CSP funding ended.


As its title stated, the audit was an attempt to measure the program’s effectiveness in fulfilling its mission. To conduct the audit, the OIG examined 2013 through 2016 CSP grant records. During that period, the department awarded 103 CSP grants to states, charter management organizations, or individual charter developers. Ninety-four were closely investigated by the OIG. The likely reason these years were chosen was that most grants are for five years. The auditors also found that the department often extends them further when grantees have not spent all of their money. Therefore, more recent grants were excluded because records were likely to be incomplete.

Incomplete and inaccurate records

The auditors noted that while the department, through WestEd, tracked spending and schools while grants were open, the tracking stopped as soon as the grant was complete. Therefore, the department had no way of knowing whether schools remained open beyond the years federal funds propped them up. This speaks to the purpose of the program — to open and expand high-quality charter schools.


When auditors asked the department to define the term high-quality, the department responded that the “CSP office does not determine whether a charter school is high-quality because state rules for determining high quality vary.”


“Additionally,” it said, “the determination of whether a charter school is a high quality is often the responsibility of charter school authorizers.” The department also told auditors that tracking a school’s existence after all money was doled out was not its job.


Even if the department wanted to do a quality check of schools as they were funding and expanding, the OIG found that there was no accurate base of information that they could rely on to determine whether they should continue what was often a multimillion-dollar grant. From the audit:


Although the CSP office created processes for tracking and reporting on charter schools that opened and expanded and charter schools that remained open through the grant performance period end date, those processes did not result in CSP grant recipients reporting precise, reliable, and timely information in their FPRs [final performance reports], APRs [annual performance reports], and data collection forms. The processes also did not result in the CSP office receiving all the necessary information to assess grant recipients’ performance or evaluate the overall effectiveness of the CSP.


Specifically, the department could not produce 13 percent of the required final reports from grantees and 43 percent of the required final data collection sheets. Auditors noted that grantees would report different numbers of schools opened or expanded among required collection forms and final reports. The accuracy of the final documents prepared by WestEd for the department was beyond the scope of the audit.

During our research for our second “Asleep at the Wheel” report, we found that the data collection sheets produced by WestEd and published in 2019 by then Education Secretary Betsy De Vos were replete with errors. Schools that had closed or never opened were reported as open or future. We also noted inaccuracies in recently submitted sheets we received from a Freedom of Information Act request, especially relating to the for-profit management status of the awardee.


But the OIG discovered a far worse problem yet. More than half of the schools that grantees committed to opening or expanding did not open or expand at all.

CSP grantees failed to meet commitments
Grant applicants asked for and received millions of dollars based on their promises to open and expand charter schools. However, when the auditors examined 94 grantee applications, they found that many grantees fell far short of their commitments.

The OIG determined that based on the commitments made in the 94 applications, state education agencies, CMOs, and developers promised to open or expand 1,570 charter schools using CSP funds.


As of July 2021, approximately 75 percent of the grant funding had been spent, yet grantees had only opened or expanded 51 percent of the charters they had promised.


This begs the question, where did millions of tax dollars go? I identified grantees by matching applications on the department website along with numbers in the data set with grant codes in the OIG report.


In its 2016 CSP application, the Florida Department of Education put forth what it called a “bold and ambitious plan to … develop a high-impact system to dramatically improve the opportunities of educationally disadvantaged students. The department said that it would use the grant to “support the creation of 200 new high-quality charter schools over the next five years.”

Florida received $70.7 million to achieve its “bold and ambitious” plan. According to the OIG report, it had only opened 33 percent — or 66 — of the schools it promised to open as of July 2021, although it had spent over 51 percent of the CSP funds.


Colorado’s 2015 application promised that it would open 72 charter schools with its over 24.2 million dollar grant. In the end, it opened fewer than half — just 33 — and expanded three schools. Nevertheless, it spent 87.5 percent of its funds.

Tennessee ambitiously promised to open 114 charter schools. It opened just 16, though it managed to spend 63 percent of its grant. These states are not outliers. The report shows a pattern.

And CMOs also failed to deliver. The KIPP charter network promised 65 schools for its jumbo $48,750,000 grant, one that well exceeded most states. It delivered 34 schools and expanded one.

Finally, there are grants to developers that the department directly provides. The Innovation Development Corporation received a $405,730 CSP grant to open The Delaware Met. It was open for just a few months before it was shut down. It also received and spent $72,000 to open DE Stem. That school was shut down before it even opened. Willow Public School, a Washington charter school, took and spent a $602,875 grant, opened, ran into trouble, changed its name, and then shut down.


The department and the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools attribute the problem to authorizer reluctance and state caps on the number of schools that can open. Really? Every state that got a grant has a state board that can override local rejections of applications. State applicants and the department are also well aware of caps. Take the case of the 2018 $78,888,888 CSP grant to the New York State Department of Education, which was outside the scope of the OIG audit.

In the New York State application review, which you can find here, raters acknowledge that New York State had not even used up its previous grant which was open beyond its terms and that charter expansion would be limited by the state cap on the number of charters. Yet they gave the application high scores, and it was approved. Where did that 2018 money go? Over $10 million went to provide staff development in technology for charter schools.

Jumbo grants

Why do states and charter management organizations ask for jumbo grants knowing they cannot deliver? Because they want the money to fund their charter school operations.


States and charter management organizations get to keep 10 percent of the cut for grant administration and technical assistance to charter schools. The bigger the grant, the bigger the cut.

Therefore, KIPP was allowed to keep nearly $5 million for its charter management organization, even though it fell way short of its commitment. The Florida Department of Education secured over $7 million for administrative services on its grant.
Second, there are no guidelines about how much an individual charter school can get. We have seen grants as low as $250,000 and grants to schools of $1.5 million. When a state realizes it cannot or will not meet its commitment, it just doles out larger amounts.


Third, until President Biden, no prior administration did anything about it over the Charter School Program’s existence. Therefore, states, CMOs, and individual schools realized pretty quickly that they could create grandiose applications, sometimes including falsehoods, and there would be no real consequences if commitments were never met.

The present department has taken a terrible beating for creating modest CSP reform regulations which are still being fought by the charter trade organizations and their proxies, including the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a charter school authorizer. Challenges include both a lawsuit and a Republican-sponsored bill to overturn the new rules.

But as the OIG audit shows, reforms are desperately needed.

.

Categories Accountability, Biden, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Corruption, Disruption, Education Industry, Failure, For-Profit, Fraud, Funding, Lies, Privatization, Propaganda, Scandals, School Choice

Charter Schools Collected $1 Billion in PPP Loans That Were Forgiven

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2022 //
14

Since President Biden announced a program to forgive $10,000-20,000 in student loan debt, new attention has been paid to the Trump administration’s Paycheck Protection Program. PPP doled out billions of dollars to businesses of all kinds, many of which didn’t need the money but took it anyway. Free money.

Among those that collected significant sums were religious schools, private schools (some of which had multi-million dollar endowments), and charter schools.

Regular public schools had a separate stream of money to help them survive COVID-19, but they were not allowed to apply for PPP money, which was only for private businesses and nonprofit.

Charter schools were allowed to double dip. Betsy DeVos was Secretary of Education, after all. So charter schools qualified for public school funding and for PPP.

Carol Burris wrote a brief summary:

More than 1,100 charter schools (about 1 in 7) received PPP loans and had those loans forgiven, according to an investigation by Craig Harris of U.S.A. today. Whether they ever needed the money is questionable since 93% of them were located in states that funded them at the same or higher levels than before Covid 19.

Charter schools, in total, received more than 1 billion dollars in PPP funding. Kipp alone got $28 million even though, according to Harris, they had $78 million in assets.

For-profit charter chains also collected PPP funds and public school funds, although they lost no funding.

ProPublica published a database of every organization that received a PPP loan. Go to the website and type in “charter school,” “Catholic school” or “private school,” “religious organization” and you will see the Trump administration’s extraordinary generosity. Check your own zip code. You will be stunned by the big giveaway to private and religious schools, even televangelists.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Funding

Pennsylvania: Want Your Child to Fail While Wasting Tax $$? Send Her to a CyberCharter!

By dianeravitch
September 3, 2022 //
17

The Keystone Center for Charter Change at the Pennsylvania School Boards Association reprinted the following report about Pennsylvania’s low-quality cyber charters.

Pa. cyber-charter schools lead on cost; lag on results

PA Capital-Star by John L. Micek, January 28, 2022Pa. spends the most out of the 27 states that have cyber-charter schools, but gets the least return on investment, according to new research

Good Friday Morning, Fellow Seekers.
As public schools made the often-awkward pivot between in-person and online instruction during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the commonwealth’s cyber-charter schools saw their enrollment explode as parents raced to find reliable schooling for their children. In fact, the Keystone State’s 14 cyber-charter schools saw their enrollment rise from slightly more than 38,000 students in October 2019 to more than 60,000 students by October 2020, marking the largest year-over-year increase, the Post-Gazette reported last May, citing data compiled by the Pennsylvania Department of Education. By last April, that popularity showed no signs of abating, with a poll by Republican-friendly Susquehanna Polling & Research in Harrisburg showing that nearly 7 in 10 respondents to a poll of 700 Pennsylvanians supported the online programs, the Post-Gazette also reported. Despite that popularity, the online programs have come in for constant criticism by advocates for traditional public schools, who argue that the online schools aren’t worth the return on investment and that student performance suffers as a result (Obligatory Caveat: Charter schools are public schools that receive taxpayer money, but are run by private operators). A recently released report by a wing of the progressive-leaning advocacy group Children First keeps up that drumbeat of criticism, finding that, of the 27 states that authorize cyber-charter schools, Pennsylvania spends the most public money on these programs, but has the “weakest systems to ensure students and taxpayers are getting their money’s worth.”

Click here to read more.

“Pennsylvania is the cyber-charter capital of the nation, ML Wernecke, the director of the Pennsylvania Charter Performance Center, which conducted the study, said in a statement. “But given the persistent performance in cyber-charter programs, and the out-of-control pressure on local taxpayers, this is one place where it is not good to be first.”

Among its chief findings, the report notes that every one of Pennsylvania’s cyber-charter schools has “been identified as needing improvement under the state’s ESSA School Improvement and Accountability plan, placing them among the state’s lowest performing schools.”

In addition, consider the low graduation rates at Cybercharters:

Considering cyber schooling for your student? Millions in taxpayer-funded advertising notwithstanding, most Pennsylvania cyber charters have graduation rates 20 percentage points or more below statewide averages for all schools.

Keystone Center for Charter Change; PA Department of Education

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Failure, For-Profit, Pennsylvania, Virtual Charter Schools

“Dear Sweden: Let Me Tell You What a School Is”—It is Not a Business

By dianeravitch
August 25, 2022 //
22

Filippa Mannerheim is a Swedish high school teacher and a critic of Sweden’s experiment in school privatization.

She writes.

Dear Sweden, let me tell you what a school is.

A school educates and dares and can demand effort. Sweden has forgotten what a school is. High school teacher Filippa Mannerheim gives a lesson to a country that has lost its grip.

Dear Sweden, since you seem to have completely lost your composure, here is a short, educational guide to help you along in your confused state.

Sweden, let me tell you what school is: A school is an academic place for knowledge and learning. A school is the nation’s most important educational institution with the aim of equipping the country’s young citizens with knowledge and abilities, so that they can develop into free and independent individuals, protect the country’s democratic foundations and with knowledge and skills contribute to the country’s continued prosperity – in times of peace as well as in troubled times .

A school is not a joint-stock company with profit as the main incentive. A school is a joint community building. A school has educated, subject-knowledgeable, qualified teachers with high status, good working conditions and great professional freedom. These teachers teach the country’s children in the country’s language.

A school has employed – not hired – resource staff: special teachers, school nurse, study and vocational guidance counselors, IT staff, janitors. A school does not have non-qualified persons behind the chair.

A school gives children who are falling behind extra support from trained special teachers. A school does not hand out digital tools or ineffective adaptations as substandard substitutes for extra support, just because it is cheaper.

A school has appropriate premises: adequately sized classrooms, an auditorium, a sports hall, a music hall, a home economics room with a kitchenette, crafts and lab rooms. A school has adequate equipment for theoretical and practical teaching, such as musical instruments, craft tools, laboratory equipment, teaching aids, working IT equipment and large amounts of fiction in class sets.

A school has a school library with trained librarians who keep an eye on the world, buy books, hold book talks and contribute with unique expertise in fiction and non-fiction, information search and source criticism. A school does not have a repository of some randomly selected books donated by parents and call this a “school library”. A school library is not “access to a public library”.

A school has a large school yard where children can jump rope, jump fence, play football, play marbles, play ghost ball, King and run around. A school yard is not a paved patch outside an apartment building.

A school is an architectural building – a proud landmark – adapted to a unique activity, namely teaching the country’s children. A school is not a bicycle cellar or an industrial premises where students get “theoretical skills” or a gym card at Sats, which is called “sports education” because it is cheaper.

A school is not a private playground for calculating corporate groups and corrupt ex-politicians who want to make a career in business. If you think so, you have seriously misunderstood what school is.

A school sells nothing because knowledge cannot be sold or bought. A school has a canteen that serves a well-planned lunch based on the Swedish Food Agency’s guidelines for a good and nutritious meal. A school does not send teenagers out to buy their daily lunch at a hamburger chain using a food stamp.

A school does not compete with other schools for school fees or easily taught students. A school has no incentive to set satisfaction ratings, as rating is a pressure-free exercise of authority – not a means of competition and a way to fish for new school customers.

A school educates and dares and can demand effort. A school is a community foundation, not a sandwich board for demanding parental customers. A school has an obvious consensus on what knowledge is and how it is taught using methods that rest on a scientific basis.

A school has teachers who conduct well-planned teaching, not teachers who send students home with work that parents are expected to help with in order for the school’s profit to be greater. A school has teachers who see themselves as academics and public servants, not marketers and influencers who hawk vacuum cleaners with the help of their students via Instagram accounts.

A school is an area where politicians strive for cooperation, long-termism, stability and the best interests of the citizens. A school is not allowed to become a bat in national political debates about cap issues or grades from year 4. The word “school” and “lobbyism” are never used in the same sense. A school system without a market is not a “communist government”.

We live in a country that has lost all understanding of what school is. We live in a country where the politicians have let go of the country’s own school system and are selling it off, piece by piece, to international companies.

We live in a country where students and parents get an image that school can be anything, however, anywhere and an image of themselves as school customers instead of parents and students. This is dangerous for the individual but even more dangerous for the nation at large.

Sweden, now you know what school is. What do you do with that knowledge?

By Filippa Mannerheim

Filippa Mannerheim is a high school teacher in Swedish and history, as well as a school debater. She attracted a lot of attention in the winter of 2020 with her open letter to Sweden’s Riksdag politicians on Expressen’s culture page, “Swedish school is a shame – you politicians have failed”.

Categories Accountability, Citizenship, Community Schools, Competition, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Education Industry, Ethics, For-Profit, Funding, International, Privatization, School Choice
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