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California: Torlakson Creates a Task Force to Review State Charter Laws

By dianeravitch
August 18, 2018 //
12

Tom Torlakson, the outgoing state superintendent of public instruction in California, has created a task force to review the charter school laws in the state.

California has more charter schools than any other state. The California Charter School Association is the richest, most powerful lobby in the state and has been able to stymie any overhaul of the law. The CCSA has staunchly opposed any revision of the law that might require accountability or transparency from charter schools and that would, for example, bar conflicts of interest or for-profit charters.

Governor Jerry Brown, who has been a progressive leader on so many major issues, has been a faithful defender of charter schools, vetoing any legislative efforts to update the law.

But, it now appears that the new governor will be Gavin Newsom, and he has no debts to the CCSSA, which directed millions of dollars to Antonio Villairaigosa in the primaries, who ran a distant third.

Given the reshuffling at the top, it is time to fix the conditions that allow frauds and scandals to go undetected in the charter sector.

Responsible members of the charter industry should work diligently to remove the fraudsters and grifters from their sector, as should everyone.

Charters should not have the ability to appeal from the district board to the county board to the state board, where they are certain to win approval, no matter how ill-qualified their staff.

At present, given the lack of any accountability for the expenditure of public money by charters, the state has experienced many scandals. To learn more about the woeful state of California’s charter industry, read Carol Burris’s carefully researched “Charters and Consequences.”

The Torlakson commission has the chance to get the law right, which would benefit both public schools and charter schools.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Privatization, Scandal

Omarosa: DeVos Wants to Privatize All Public Schools

By dianeravitch
August 18, 2018 //
51

Valerie Strauss writes about Omarosa’s new book “Unhinged” and what she says about Betsy DeVos.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2018/08/14/omarosa-claims-betsy-devos-wants-to-replace-public-education-with-for-profit-schools-and-that-trump-calls-her-ditzy-devos/

“A new book about President Trump by one of his former senior advisers, Omarosa Manigault Newman, claims that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos wants “to replace public education with for-profit schools” and that Trump has called her by the nickname “Ditzy DeVos….”

“Manigault Newman writes:

“Her plan, in a nutshell, is to replace public education with for-profit schools. She believes it would be better for students, but the truth is, it’s about profit. She’s so fixated on her agenda, she can’t give any consideration to building our public schools, providing financing for them, particularly their infrastructure needs.

“Manigault Newman writes that she accompanied DeVos on a trip to Florida in 2017 and that DeVos was booed while giving a graduation speech at Bethune-Cookman University, a historically black college in Florida. Graduating students heckled DeVos in large part because a few months earlier, she had called historically black colleges and universities — which were created because blacks couldn’t attend white schools — “pioneers” of school choice.

“Manigault Newman writes that after the speech, she asked the secretary how she thought she did. DeVos responded, according to the book, by saying she thought she did “great,” and then is quoted as having said the students at the Bethune-Cookman graduation “don’t have the capacity to understand what we’re trying to accomplish.” Manigault Newman then wrote this: “Meaning, all those black students were too stupid to understand her agenda.”

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization

Valerie Strauss: “Why Would Anyone Deliberately Hurt Students” Who Were Defrauded By Scam Colleges?

By dianeravitch
August 17, 2018 //
15

Valerie Strauss wrote here about Betsy DeVos’s plan to remove consumer protections from students who were scammed.

“Why would anyone want to make it harder for defrauded students? Well, the Education Department says that college students are “adults who can be reasonably expected to make informed decisions and who must take personal accountability for the decisions they make.” Supporters of the proposed changes say it is too easy for students to apply for loan forgiveness and that too much public money will have to be used to repay bad loans.

“To be sure, college students are indeed adults who can be reasonably expected to make informed decisions. And adults should indeed take personal accountability for the decisions they made.

“But the proposed regulation says, among other things, that to qualify for loan forgiveness, students who claim they have been defrauded have to prove the college intended to defraud them and show that the college had exhibited a “reckless disregard” for the truth.

“That is not, for example, the standard for state lemon laws, which offer compensatory remedies to consumers who buy cars and other goods that prove to be defective. They don’t insist that the consumers prove that a car dealer or manufacturer intended to commit fraud by making and selling a flawed product.

“Let’s say DeVos, a billionaire from Michigan, decided to buy a new yacht and it turned out to have a bum engine that broke down repeatedly. Would she have to prove the seller intended to defraud her to seek replacement or some kind of compensation?

“Consumer products are not college education, for sure, but the Trump administration believes in operating schools as if they were businesses, so the comparison seems apt.”

Categories Betsy DeVos, For-Profit, Fraud, Higher Education, Student Financial Aid and Student Debt, Students

Betsy DeVos: Stealing from Students to Enrich For-Profit Colleges

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2018 //
15

Is Betsy DeVos the meanest woman in America?

She has just taken the steps needed to remove protections from students defrauded by predatory for-profit “colleges.”

Like others in the despicable Trump maladministration, DeVos thinks that consumers should fend for themselves. If they get defrauded, it’s their own fault for making a bad choice.

You can see where this is going. Government protects the marketplace, not the consumers. If you happened to get suckered by slick advertising, that’s your fault. Don’t expect the government to police the marketplace. Caveat emptor is your job.

DeVos previously rolled back regulations that allowed students who were defrauded to get a refund.

“Education Secretary Betsy DeVos formally moved Friday to scrap a regulation that would have forced for-profit colleges to prove that the students they enroll are able to attain decent-paying jobs, the most drastic in a series of policy shifts that will free the scandal-scarred, for-profit sector from safeguards put in effect during the Obama era.

“In a written announcement posted on its website, the Education Department laid out its plans to eliminate the so-called gainful employment rule, which sought to hold for-profit and career college programs accountable for graduating students with poor job prospects and overwhelming debt. The Obama-era rule would have revoked federal funding and access to financial aid for poor-performing schools.

“After a 30-day comment period, the rule is expected to be eliminated July 1, 2019. Instead Ms. DeVos would provide students with more data about all of the nation’s higher education institutions — not just career and for-profit college programs — including debt, expected earnings after graduation, completion rates, program cost, accreditation and other measures.

“Students deserve useful and relevant data when making important decisions about their education post-high school,” Ms. DeVos said in a statement. “That’s why instead of targeting schools simply by their tax status, this administration is working to ensure students have transparent, meaningful information about all colleges and all programs. Our new approach will aid students across all sectors of higher education and improve accountability.”

“But in rescinding the rule, the department is eradicating the most fearsome accountability measures — the loss of federal aid — for schools that promise to prepare students for specific careers but fail to prepare them for the job market, leaving taxpayers on the hook to pay back their taxpayer-backed loans.

“The DeVos approach is reversing nearly a decade of efforts to create a tough accountability system for the largely unregulated for-profit sector of higher education. In recent years, large for-profit chains, which offer training for everything from automotive mechanics to cosmetology to cybersecurity, have collapsed under mountains of complaints and lawsuits for employing misleading and deceptive practices.

“The implosions of ITT Technical Institute and Corinthian Colleges generated tens of thousands of complaints from student borrowers who said they were left with worthless degrees. The Obama administration encouraged the expansion of public community colleges as it forgave at least $450 million in taxpayer-funded student debt for for-profit graduates who could not find decent jobs with the degrees or certificates they had earned.

“The regulations passed in the wake of those scandals remade the industry. Since 2010, when the Obama administration began deliberating the rules, more than 2,000 for-profit and career programs — nearly half — have closed, and the industry’s student population has dropped by more than 1.6 million, said Steve Gunderson, the president of Career Education Colleges and Universities, the for-profit industry’s trade association.”

There is a simple principle that every student should think about: Avoid for-profit “Colleges”and “universities.”

Don’t be scammed by the next fake “Trump University.”

Categories Corruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Higher Education

Congressman Collins and Conflicts of Interest

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2018 //
7

By Now, you have probably read about Congressman Chris Collins (R-NY), who has “suspended” his campaign while promising that he would be vindicated after the FBI accused him of insider trading. He allegedly alerted his son to dump stock in a drug company whose premier drug failed clinical trials, causing the shares to drop 90% of their market value.

The story is worse than what has been widely reported.

“The three-term congressman’s infectious enthusiasm for Innate Immunotherapeutics, the tiny biotech firm, led to his indictment on Wednesday, when he and several other investors were accused of insider trading. Prosecutors said that he tipped off his son to the poor results of the company’s clinical drug trial for a notoriously intractable form of multiple sclerosis before they were public, allowing the son and others to dump their stock and save hundreds of thousands of dollars. Mr. Collins sat on the company’s board until May, and at one point was its largest shareholder.

“The stock scandal has rippled through Congress, where his favorite stock tip had enticed at least seven former or current House Republicans into investing along with him, his two grown children and other friends. It provided new ammunition for Democrats seeking to take back the House, and forced Mr. Collins to announce on Saturday that he would not seek re-election to a fourth term.

“In his statement, Mr. Collins called the insider trading charges “meritless” and vowed to fight them to have his “good name cleared of any wrongdoing….”

Mr. Collins may have been the largest investor in health companies on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, but one-third of its members also bought and sold biotech, pharmaceutical and medical device stocks, an analysis by The New York Times has found. Republican Representatives William Long II and Markwayne Mullin served with Mr. Collins on the panel’s health subcommittee and invested in Innate. The subcommittee weighed in on topics ranging from the Food and Drug Administration’s authority over speeding up approval of new drugs to the Affordable Care Act.

“Beyond Innate Immunotherapeutics, Mr. Collins, among the wealthiest members of Congress, has held leadership roles in other biotech companies that were little known or mentioned on Capitol Hill. Until this past week, he was chairman of the board of directors of ZeptoMetrix, a private lab company based in Buffalo that he co-founded and that has received millions of dollars in federal contracts, according to government records. He also reported owning between $25 million and $50 million in shares of the company, but has since transferred an unknown amount into his wife’s name, a company spokesman said. In June, he sold as much as $1 million of stock in Chembio Diagnostics, a medical tests and equipment manufacturer, according to his ethics disclosure forms.

“Mr. Collins did not disclose these ties in committee hearings when topics overlapped with his business interests, including the development of a test for the Zika virus and whether the F.D.A. should more closely regulate some types of lab tests. Earlier, in 2013, he brought up the experimental drug that Innate was developing in a hearing about brain research, but did not mention his financial stake in the company.

“Mr. Collins had no business serving on this publicly traded company from the get-go,” said Meredith McGehee, executive director of Issue One, a Washington ethics watchdog organization, who noted that such a practice was not permitted in the Senate. “The House needs to update its rules.”

“Since 2012, a federal law has prevented members of Congress from trading stocks based on confidential information they receive as lawmakers. Members of both chambers are permitted to hold stocks and members of the House of Representatives may serve on boards as long as they disclose it. Generally, lawmakers don’t have to recuse themselves from a vote or other action that might affect their holdings unless they are virtually the only investor who would benefit…

“His involvement with Innate surfaced in December of 2015, and came up again during the confirmation of Tom Price for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Mr. Price’s active investment in pharmaceutical and health care stocks drew scrutiny — and calls for an investigation — from Democrats. Mr. Price divested from his stock in Innate before becoming secretary, and later resigned from his Cabinet post after his use of expensive charter flights on government trips became public.

“By comparison, little attention has been paid to Mr. Collins’s connection to ZeptoMetrix, a company he helped found in 1999 that supplies viruses, bacteria and other products to laboratories around the country.

“Mr. Collins has said that his 50-percent holdings in ZeptoMetrix are in the name of his wife and daughter. The family’s interest in the company ranges from $25 million to $50 million, according to Mr. Collins’s financial disclosure forms. They earned $1 million to $5 million in interest from ZeptoMetrix. His wife, Mary Collins, receives a salary from the company, according to the disclosure….

“A spokeswoman for Mr. Collins on Friday pointed to statements that he made during a hearing in 2016 about bioresearch labs that disclosed that he founded and led a lab company. However, Mr. Collins did not reveal during the hearing that he remained on its board, nor his ongoing financial stake.

“In January, the outgoing chief executive of ZeptoMetrix, Gregory R. Chiklis, sued the company in New York State Supreme Court, accusing the company of financial irregularities, including paying “phantom employees” annual salaries of $500,000. Mr. Chiklis also said that Mr. Collins “unilaterally” made most decisions.”

Categories Accountability, Corruption, For-Profit, Fraud

This is What Privatization Looks Like: Schools Bought and Sold

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2018 //
16

Why should taxpayers subsidize corporations that buy and sell schools to one another as one fails and the other picks up the offloaded franchise?

Vote them all out of office in November!

Reader Chiara wrote:

“By June of this year, White Hat’s once prolific presence in Ohio had shriveled to a single online school — Ohio Distance and Electronic Learning Academy (OHDELA) — and 10 “Life Skills” centers, which deliver computer-based GED courses to academically faltering teens and young adults.

Virginia-based Accel Schools, which is amassing an education empire the likes of which hasn’t been seen since White Hat dominated the Ohio landscape, has bought out the contract for OHDELA.

Utah-based Fusion Education Group (FusionED) is taking over contracts for seven of the Life Skills centers, including the North Akron branch in a Chapel Hill storefront at 1458 Brittain Road.

Life Skills Northeast Ohio on Larchmere Boulevard in Cleveland has hired Oakmont Education LLC, a company associated with Cambridge Education Group. White Hat could find no buyer for the last two centers, which will close at 4600 Carnegie Ave. in Cleveland and 3405 Market St. in Youngstown.

Information on White Hat’s off-loading of assets came via the schools’ sponsors: the Ohio Council of Community Schools, which oversaw OHDELA and two Life Skills schools, and St. Aloysius Orphanage, a Cincinnati social service provider. ”

This is what privatization looks like. These schools are 100% taxpayer-funded yet they’re being bought and sold by private entities.

All they’re doing is replacing one garbage contractor with others.

Ohio needs to clean house of state-level politicians and get some new people in there.

This situation will not improve until we break the stranglehold these contractors and their lobbyists have on state government.

Old wine, new bottles.

https://www.ohio.com/akron/news/local/schools-out-for-white-hat-david-brennans-pioneering-for-profit-company-exits-ohio-charter-scene

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

The Best Quote of the Year

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2018 //
7

Do you remember that the 1983 report “A Nation at Risk” warned about the terrible condition of America’s public schools, setting off the frenzy of “reform” that has now fermented into high-stakes testing, privatization, profiteering, closing schools, firing teachers and principals, and enriching testing companies?

Here is a description of the composition of the Commission that wrote the report:

The commission included 12 administrators, 1 businessperson, 1 chemist, 1 physicist, 1 politician, 1 conservative activist, and 1 teacher. … Just one practicing teacher and not a single academic expert on education. It should come as no surprise that a commission dominated by administrators found that the problems of U.S. schools were mainly caused by lazy students and unaccountable teachers. Administrative incompetence was not on the agenda. Nor were poverty, inequality, and racial discrimination.

Perhaps the most famous line in the report was this one:

If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

A reader of this blog who goes by the tag “Ohio Algebra Teacher” offered a new version of that famous line:

If a foreign country had inflicted upon our public education system what Ed Reform plutocrats and their toadying political sycophants have implemented upon it, we would have considered it an act of war.

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Privatization, Testing, Vouchers

Ohio: Supreme Court Rules Against ECOT and the Virtual Charter School is DEAD!

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2018 //
26

It has taken nearly 20 years, and cost Ohio taxpayers $1 billion or more, but the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) died in court this week.

The owner William Lager became a millionaire many times over, supplying goods and services to his corporation.

The “school” had a high attrition rate and the highest dropout rate of any high school in the nation, but it was protected by politicians who received campaign contributions from Lager. The contributions were piffle compared to Lager’s profits.

After embarrassing stories, the ECOT authorizer withdrew its sponsorship. The state, after years of ignoring the horrible performance of ECOT and its huge profits, eventually got around to auditing it and found many phantom students and asked ECOT for an accounting. ECOT insisted that when students turn on their computer, they were learning even if they didn’t participate in activities.

ECOT attorneys argued that the state illegally changed the rules on how to count students in the middle of a school year, and that state law did not require students to participate in class work in order to be counted for funding purposes.

Perhaps foreshadowing the final decision, as attorney Marion Little’s argued before the court in February that the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow should get full funding for students even if they do no work, Chief Justice O’Connor interjected, “How is that not absurd?”

After a long battle in court, the Supreme Court voted 4-2 to support the state in its decision to force ECOT to pay back money for students who never received instruction.

Since opening the school in 2000, Lager went from financial distress to a millionaire, with his for-profit companies, IQ Innovations and Altair Learning Management, collecting about $200 million in state funding for work done on behalf of ECOT. At its peak, the school was graduating more than 2,000 students annually, but also had the highest dropout rate in the state.

Lager and his associates also donated $2.5 million to Ohio politicians and political parties, the vast majority to Republicans, with the ECOT scandal boiling into a major issue ahead of the Nov. 6 election featuring the gubernatorial race between DeWine and Democrat Richard Cordray.

Be it noted that Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is a huge fan of online charter schools and was an investor in K12 Inc., which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Farewell, ECOT. You won’t be missed. Besides, K12 Inc. and other e-schools are rushing in to Ohio to grab your market share.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Failure, For-Profit, Fraud, Ohio, Scandal, Virtual Charter Schools

Major Media Remove the Conspiracy-Theory Infowars from Their Sites

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2018 //
51

YouTube, Facebook, and Apple have agreed to remove the pernicious, fake content produced by Alex Jones of Infowars.

This is good news. Jones has created a brand based on lies, hoaxes, and fear-mongering. His most disgusting conspiracy theory was his claim that the Sandy Hook massacre was fake, a stage production with child actors, stage managed by the Obama administration to advance the war against guns. Jones is being sued for defamation by parents who lost children at the Sandy Hook massacre. Some have been pursued by stalkers and received death threats.

In its daily news brief, CNN summarized the story:

“Some of the web’s top gatekeepers have unleashed a serious crackdown on content from Infowars and its founder, Alex Jones. Infowars is the site (and Jones the man) that pushes baseless conspiracy theories that often create real-life damage (like the Sandy Hook hoax over which several more families this week sued Jones for defamation). YouTube, Facebook and Apple yesterday removed content from Infowars, claiming it violates their policies, such as YouTube’s barring “hate speech and harassment.” YouTube’s actions probably most damage the brand, which had multiple channels with millions of subscribers and more than a billion views.”

To learn more about Alex Jones, watch John Oliver.

Categories For-Profit, Fraud, Hoax, Lies, Media

Arne Cashes in Again

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2018 //
46

Arne Duncan just was invited to join the board of Dreambox, a digital math program selling technology to schools. Dreambox also got $130 Million from a new investor. Board members of private corporations typically get $100,000 or more to show up for a few meetings and add prestige to the board. Nice work, Arne. I assume Dreambox doesn’t know that Rave to the Top was a flop.

Categories Duncan, Arne, For-Profit, Race to the Top, Technology
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