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Laura Chapman: Computer-Based Education as a Depersonalized and Profitable Industry

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2017 //
23

Laura Chapman writes here about “computer-based education” and who profits from it.

“Frankly, the scariest for-profit ventures are the tech companies that hope to replace teachers and schools with their “scalable” models.” Diane Ravitch.

Yes. Computer-based Education (CBE) is being marketed as personalized when it is exactly the opposite. Legislators in Ohio and elsewhere are counting on CBE to produce a radical reduction in brick and mortar schools and the need for educators who have college degrees and professional credentials.

CBE is part of the reason that we states are trying to install student-based budgets as the norm for schools and districts. Accountants are dissecting a district’s budget so costs can be allocated to specific schools, then to courses and grade levels in the school, including each teacher’s salary with benefit package, and the estimated cost of educating an individual student to a specific standard of mastery, given the student’s SES characteristics and the like. These estimates would take into account local revenues, the value of federal and state funds (usually less than 12% each), and so forth. The aim is to lay claim to CBE as the “best bang for the buck” while pointing to a system that “objectively” monitors student mastery of pre-determined content (delivered by computers).

Here are two maps that show the rapid uptake of CBE as if it is the new panacea for education. Look beyond the maps for excellent research on how CBE is being marketed.

Hoping to escape Competency-Based Education? Looks like Wyoming is your only option.

Here you will find amazing and disturbing stats and graphic illustrations of some interlocking initiatives, all designed to have a rapid and “collective impact” on the educational landscape. https://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2017/05/02/knowledgeworks-the-every-student-succeeds-act-essa-and-the-push-for-competency-based-learning/

The Gates Foundation is investing in a program that would train adults to serve as “providers” of CBE, therby eliminating the need for state certification to teach. In fact the whole CBE movement is aimed at “deschooling” education. That requires demonizing place-based brick and mortar schools and grade-by-grade instruction as part of the antiquated lock-step factory model.

The International Association for K–12 Online Learning (iNACOL) aims to expand access to online formats for learning, with mobile phone access for some programs. See especially their publications calling for “innovation zones” that would provide for “competency-based, personalized learning” free of brick and mortar schools.

“Policy makers establish innovation zone authority or programs through legislation or rule-making to catalyze the development of new learning models. The innovation zone authority provides increased flexibility for a state to waive certain regulations and requirements for schools and systems beginning to plan, design and implement personalized, competency-based education models. Innovation zones offer state education policy waivers in order to support practitioners in the process of developing and implementing new learning models. As practitioners implement their models, any rules or regulations that impede the model development are brought to light and can be addressed through waivers in a state, which has provided such innovation zones. This shifts the role of the state agency from one of compliance enforcement to support in enabling new model development to occur in districts.”

iNACOL lists the states with favorable legislation: Arkansas, Colorado, Kentucky, Mississippi, and New York. INACOL is supported by the The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Nellie Mae Education Foundation, and The Walton Family Foundation. http://www.inacol.org/resource/innovation-zones-creating-policy-flexibility-for-personalized-learning/

The work of iNACOL is closely connected with the National Repository of Online Content (NROC). NROC Project is a non-profit network focused on “college & career readiness.” It is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, and NROC institutional members. Members provide multi-media content and applications to websites like HippoCampus (six sources of online content in Math, Science, Social Studies, English and Religion) and EdReady (math to prepare for commonly used placement exams, such as AccuPlacer, Compass, SAT, and ACT). Membership in NROC keeps costs low for institutions, and free for individuals. NROC operates under the umbrella of The Monterey Institute for Technology and Education (MITE), a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation founded in 2003. MITE is staffed by three people. Taken as a group, they have worked for McGraw-Hill Education, CTB/McGraw-Hill, Harcourt Brace, in addition to having experience in corporate training, media, and financial management. MITE has received $16.2 million from the Gates foundation.

Although it is wise to keep attention focussed on the damage to public education being done by charter schools, vouchers, and the standardized testing requirements in ESSA, I think the larger threat to public education is CBE. Venture capitalists are investing in educational management systems and apps galore. KnowledgeWorks.org markets CBE as teacher-free, learner-centered education organized by playlists of “opportunities for learning” with for-hire “sherpas” to guide students on “learning journeys.”

So far, there is very little discussion of the Trump/Republican roll-back of privacy regulations that once applied to internet service providers. There is little discussion of the prospect that this administration may eliminate the principle of net-neutrality in delivering content. The former means that student privacy (already thin and fragile as a moth’s wing in school contracts) is open to confabulation by personal/parental choices of products and services. The latter means that the speed and cost of internet services, including the e-rate program for schools, may become strictly market-based–supported by ads or other pay-to-play schemes.

CBE promoters see education organized in an ecological landscape with informal learning centers (for working parents), abundant on-line resources; opportunities for learning via community organizations such as art museums, libraries, parks, zoos, courts; and local businesses/workplaces.

Each of these providers of education would offer a badge or credential symbolic of learning. The badges or credentials are “stackable” so students who may verify their competencies as needed in seeking a job or advanced education. There is not much talk about the actual costs of CBE, the shelf life of hardware, the quality of on-line instructional materials, and unlimited possibilities for commercial exploitation of children and their parents. Choice through vouchers and CBE are perfect partners for creating the illusion that all children can and will have access to the best education in the world and completely personalized.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Disruption, Education Industry, For-Profit, Technology

Why For-Profit Education So Often Fails

By dianeravitch
May 5, 2017 //
27

This is an interesting article by Jonathan A. Knee of the Columbia Business School about the perils of making a profit in the education sector. I note that he has a book coming out, fleshing out his case studies and arguments about for-profit investing in education.

Knee describes the many visionaries who saw the possibilities of transforming education into a for-profit bonanza but lost their shirts.

Earlier this year, LeapFrog Enterprises, the educational-entertainment business, sold itself for $1 a share. The deal came several months after LeapFrog received a warning from the New York Stock Exchange that it would be delisted if the value of its stock did not improve, a disappointing end to the public life of a company that had the best-performing IPO of 2002.

LeapFrog was one of the very last remaining of the dozens of investments made by Michael Milken through his ambitiously named Knowledge Universe. Founded in 1996 by Milken and his brother, Lowell, with the software giant Oracle’s CEO, Larry Ellison, as a silent partner, Knowledge Universe aspired to transform education. Its founders intended it to become, in Milken’s phrase, “the pre-eminent for-profit education and training company,” serving the world’s needs “from cradle to grave.”

Knowledge Universe businesses included early-childhood learning centers, for-profit K–12 schools, online M.B.A. programs, IT-training services for working professionals, and more. Milken’s penchant for secrecy makes a comprehensive assessment impossible—most of the businesses were privately held and some were sold to private buyers for undisclosed sums. But of the companies about which there is public information, most, like LeapFrog, ended badly. Education remains untransformed.

Milken was far from alone in the belief that education could be revolutionized through radical new business models. In 2012, the media mogul Rupert Murdoch and the former New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein established the Amplify division within News Corp. At the time of his initial investment, Murdoch described K–12 education as “a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed.” Their idea was to overturn the way children were taught in public schools by integrating technology into the classroom. Although inspirational, the idea entailed competing with a series of multibillion-dollar global leaders in educational hardware, software, and curriculum development. After several years and more than $1 billion, with no serious prospect of ever turning a profit, Murdoch and Klein sold their venture for scrap value to Laurene Powell Jobs, Steve Jobs’s widow, last year.

Professor Knee does see a role for for-profit businesses, but it is on the margins, not as school operators.

Frankly, the scariest for-profit ventures are the tech companies that hope to replace teachers and schools with their “scalable” models.

If the subject interests you, as it should, you should be sure to read Samuel Abrams’ Education and the Commercial Mindset, which documents the Edison Project disaster.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Failure, For-Profit, Privatization

EdTech Envisioning Profits by Jumping into School Marketplace: “Don’t Call It Philanthropy”

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2017 //
20

While teachers continue to struggle for a decent middle-income salary, the edtech entrepreneurs are salivating about their success in the ed marketplace. Listen to the audio to hear the sound of happy money-makers.

Some people are getting very rich indeed by investing in technology to replace teachers and to call it “personalization.” When there is no teacher involved, it is “depersonalization.”

Here is the press release.

When Tom Davidson served as a state legislator for a small district in southern Maine two decades ago, he became intimately familiar with the byzantine, bureaucratic, and often, frankly, subpar sausage-making that goes into bankrolling education at a local level. (“There was never a shortage of good ideas, but almost always a shortage of money,” he says.)

So Davidson took his learnings to the private sector and founded EverFi, an education software startup, in 2008. As CEO, Davidson has been rallying some of the biggest names in business behind his cause. Indeed, on Wednesday, EverFi will announce that it has raised $190 million in new funding from a host of magnates to help bring schooling into the digital age. The company last raised $40 million a year ago, news Fortune covered first.

The round marks one of the largest deals to date in the area of education technology, also known as “ed tech.” It is exceeded in size by only two others: German publishing giant Bertelsmann’s $230 million stake in HotChalk, a firm that develops software for online graduate degree programs, and a $200 million fundraising by TutorGroup, an Alibaba-backed (BABA, -0.36%) startup that helps Chinese speakers learn English online. Both of those came in November 2015.

“We’re starting to see for the first time some scale in the space and the investments are reflective of that playing out,” Davidson said on a phone call.

In addition to catapulting EverFi into the ed tech big leagues, the fundraising round marks the debut deal for lead investor Rise, a newly established social impact investing fund managed by TPG Growth, a private equity firm that has also backed Internet hotshots like Uber and Airbnb. Rise contr

Other new investors included TPG Growth, which contributed $30 million, and L.A.-based MainStreet Advisors. The firms join existing investors Advance Publications, Rethink Impact, Allen & Co, as well as Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon (AMZN, +0.38%). Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Alphabet (GOOGL, +0.31%), and Evan Williams, cofounder of Twitter (TWTR, +10.78%), are investors in earlier rounds.

Nehal Raj, a partner at TPG who leads tech investments, said that EverFi’s business meshes well with the firm’s investment thesis, which involves homing in on an outdated process in a market featuring relatively few competitors. Education has traditionally been “done in a labor-intensive, inefficient way,” Raj said on a call, mentioning the paper-based products, in-person meetings, and binders filled with sign-in sheets and lists of checkboxes, that are its hallmarks.

EverFi “automates all that in a tech-centric way,” Raj added.

Based in Washington, D.C., EverFi has about 200 employees. The company sells software subscriptions to schools and businesses that help teach financial literacy (understanding mortgages and credit, for example), responsible college behavior (involving hazing and alcohol consumption), corporate compliance (like sexual harassment and diversity training), and other programs. Among the firm’s customers are Google, Oracle (ORCL, +0.56%), Whole Foods (WFM, +0.94%), and Airbnb, as well as universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford and 20,000 K-12 schools.

Another part of EverFi’s business involves striking partnerships with organizations that agree to license software on behalf of schools around the country. General Electric (GE, +0.05%), the NHL, the NFL, and Intel (INTC, +0.38%)have all done so.

To date EverFi has raised a total of $251 million including the latest round, its Series D. People familiar with the deal declined to comment on the firm’s private valuation, though one person familiar with the terms suggested that the company had not, at this stage, hit that oft-vaunted billion-dollar milestone.

Davidson said he plans to put money from the latest funding round into international expansion as well as possible acquisitions.

Rise, the lead backer, was cofounded by Bill McGlashan, managing partner of TPG Growth, along with Bono, frontman of U2 and well-known social activist, and Jeff Skoll, an early eBay (EBAY, -0.21%) exec, philanthropist, and film producer. Supplementing that trio, the fund’s board is stacked with philanthropic powerhouses who double as investors, such as Laurene Powell Jobs, Richard Branson, Reid Hoffman, Lynne Benioff, and Pierre Omidyar, to name a few.

Rise is set to announce Wednesday that it is adding three people to its education team as well. John Rogers, a veteran education, healthcare, and social impact investor, will lead the segment. Meanwhile, Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education under former President Barack Obama, and Rick Levin, CEO of Coursera and former longtime president of Yale University, are joining as senior advisors.

Though Rise has bright-eyed, do-gooder aims, it is far from a charity, in its backers’ view. The fund is expected to deliver social returns—helping underserved communities gain access to educational resources, for instance—along with financial ones, people involved in its management told Fortune.

Davidson said he spent considerable time walking the new set of investors through the fundamentals of EverFi’s business and technology. Bono, for instance, interrupted a few family dinners to go over aspects in granular detail, according to Davidson.

“It was super impressive how in the weeds he was in the deal and what we were building,” Davidson said. “He was hammering me with questions around Title IX school implementations.”

When Davidson’s wife would ask how much longer he might be, Davidson says he would inevitably reply, “I’m still on the phone with him. He’s asking about our rural Mississippi programs.”

Despite the interruptions, Davidson said he loved how involved the Irish rockstar had been in the process. “He is deadly serious about these issues,” he said about Bono. (You can read more about Bono’s business pursuits in this Fortune magazine profile from last year.)

EverFi will no doubt prove a bellwether for Rise’s investment strategy: an attempt to make money while achieving some social good. If the plan works, EverFi could also end up teaching the world a valuable economic lesson—that capitalism can strive for ideals beyond merely increasing shareholder value.

Just don’t call it philanthropy.

Categories For-Profit, Technology

Ohio: Kucinich Blasts Charter Frauds and Scams

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2017 //
10

Former Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who may be thinking of a run for Governor of Ohio, launched a four-city speaking tour across the state, castigating the corruption in the charter industry at every stop.

Kucinich understands that every dollar that goes to a charter is taken away from a public school. He is the first politician who understands the shell game. Defund public schools while funding a dual system.


“Former U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich launched a four-city, anti-charter school tour in Columbus, Ohio on Monday, telling attendees at a press conference that “public education’s financial base is being destroyed by private, for-profit corporate interests.”

Kucinich, who served 16 years in Congress, was Cleveland mayor in the late 1970s, and ran for president in 2004 and 2008, plans to hold town hall-style forums across the state in Centerville, Columbus, Parma, and Elyria Monday through Thursday. He kicked it off by talking to reporters at the Ohio statehouse.

“When state revenue for public schools decreases because of money which goes to private for-profit charters, public school officials must make up the difference by asking local property taxpayers for more money,” Kucinich said. “It represents a deliberate, destructive undermining of the public education of Ohio’s children. What is our educational philosophy today? Let for-profit corporations exploit the mass of children by controlling the state government?”

“With that last line, he was referring to state legislators “who have accepted millions of dollars in campaign contributions from charter-school operators, notably William Lager of the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow and David Brennan of White Hat Management,” according to the Columbus Dispatch….

According to a report released in advance of DeVos’ visit, since the 2012-2013 school year, $3,744,988 in state funding originally meant for children attending Van Wert County’s local public schools “has instead gone to privately run brick-and-mortar and online charter schools.” In turn, said the report from Innovation Ohio, “local taxpayers in Van Wert…have had to subsidize these larger state payments to charter schools to the tune of $1.4 million—money that should have supplemented the larger state aid amount but is now being used to subsidize poorer performing, privately run charter schools.”

Supporting Kucinich’s criticism, the report pointed out that indeed, “local property taxpayers in Van Wert County schools are paying $3 million more in property taxes in 2015 (the most recent available data from the Ohio Department of Taxation) than they did in 2013, which is increasing those communities’ reliance on property taxes to pay for education—a result deemed unconstitutional four times by the Ohio Supreme Court.”

According to a report released in advance of DeVos’ visit, since the 2012-2013 school year, $3,744,988 in state funding originally meant for children attending Van Wert County’s local public schools “has instead gone to privately run brick-and-mortar and online charter schools.” In turn, said the report from Innovation Ohio, “local taxpayers in Van Wert…have had to subsidize these larger state payments to charter schools to the tune of $1.4 million—money that should have supplemented the larger state aid amount but is now being used to subsidize poorer performing, privately run charter schools.”

Supporting Kucinich’s criticism, the report pointed out that indeed, “local property taxpayers in Van Wert County schools are paying $3 million more in property taxes in 2015 (the most recent available data from the Ohio Department of Taxation) than they did in 2013, which is increasing those communities’ reliance on property taxes to pay for education—a result deemed unconstitutional four times by the Ohio Supreme Court.”

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Ohio, Privatization

Jennifer Berkshire Reports on Her Trip to Van Wert, Ohio, with Betsy and Randi

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2017 //
1

Jennifer Berkshire, once known as EduShyster, raised the money to follow Betsy and Randi to Van Wert, Ohio.

This is a powerful article and a first-hand report. I hope you will read it in full.

Here is her perceptive report on the trip, what she saw, what she learned.

Clearly, Randi and the local educators wanted her to see wonderful public schools where students were happily engaged in learning. Perhaps she might think twice about the budget cuts that the Trump administration is set to inflict, even on those who voted for him, like the good people of Van Wert. Maybe she would hesitate to harm them. Maybe she might advocate for them.

When the two leaders visited the elementary schools, the fifth grade students were learning about the Great Depression, and how awful it was for people who lost their jobs and their futures because of decisions made by bankers far away. The parallels with the present are unavoidable.

Jennifer couldn’t help noting that Betsy DeVos and Trump want to roll back all the laws and regulations that were created to prevent another Depression and to protect ordinary people from the predatory malefactors of great wealth.

The tour’s next stop was the fifth grade classroom of Nate Hoverman, a Van Wert grad, whose students have spent weeks working on a project-based learning unit about how kids experienced the Great Depression. On this day, the students were reading an excerpt from Russell Freedman’s Children of the Great Depression about how the economic crisis crippled schools across the country.

Out of work and out of money, people couldn’t pay the taxes that paid for their schools. Schools closed down or shortened their school years and teachers everywhere were laid off, which meant huge classes for the students who still had schools to go to. In Chicago, teachers, who hadn’t been paid for months, joined with parents and students and marched on the city’s banks, demanding that the bankers loan the city enough money to pay their salaries. When some of the teachers occupied the banks, the cops moved in. Freedman cites a newspaper report: “In a moment, unpaid policemen were cracking their clubs against the heads of unpaid school teachers.”

The timing of the reading was a coincidence, Hoverman told me. The students had started the unit reading the acclaimed novel Bud, Not Buddy, about an orphan making his way in Flint, MI in 1936, but they wanted to know more about the “why” behind the story. Still, it would be hard to conjure up a more fitting frame for our present precipice. For DeVos and her peeps, this was the period of American history when the nation went pear-shaped, the government using its might on behalf of working people like it never had before. The regulatory state was born, the unions were newly powerful, and those students who marched through the streets of Chicago with their teachers grew up to become Democrats with a deep distrust of the free market.

Both DeVos’ own family and the one she married into were part of the business-led crusade to roll back the New Deal’s accomplishments that began practically as soon as the New Deal did. Seven decades later, the fever dream of low taxes, little regulation and shriveled public services may finally be at hand.

Jennifer goes on to describe the heavy hand of ALEC behind the choice movement, not only to demolish public schools, but to lower the wages of construction workers. And the heavy and successful lobbying for cyber charters, which have terrible results but are very adept at getting more and more taxpayer money with no accountability for students or performance or finances.

Jennifer met a local education activist, Brianne Kramer, who had taught at one of the online schools and knew how dreadful they are. She asked her the question: where is this leading?

She answered without missing a beat.

“They don’t believe in the idea of common schools because they don’t believe in the common good,” said Kramer.

Kramer and I were meeting for the first time. A friend of hers from the Bad Ass Teachers Association had alerted her that I was heading to this corner of Ohio, and here we were 36 hours later, discussing the future of public education in the Buckeye State over biscuits and broasted chicken (a thing!) at a Bob Evans. Kramer has become something of an expert on the influence of ALEC in Ohio. Last year, she testified before the Senate Finance Committee in favor of a bill that would have subjected the state’s notoriously awful virtual schools to more oversight. Her testimony is well worth watching, but make sure you stick around for the Q and A portion, when Senator Bill Coley, ALEC’s Ohio state chairman and a veritable ambassador for ECOT, interrogates Kramer and makes the case for why virtual schooling is the best kind of schooling. The bill never made it out of committee.

I needed Kramer to help me understand the endgame for public education in a state like Ohio. Her vision was bleak enough to make me wish that Bob Evans served alcohol. She thinks that the controversial plan to blow up the Youngstown schools, hatched with charter school lobbyists and Catholic school groups, and passed under cover of darkness in 2015, is likely a model for how the GOP plans to break up and sell off other school districts throughout the state. It sounds conspiratorial until you consider that the chair of the House Education Committee has called for doing just that: “sell[ing] off the existing buildings, equipment and real estate to those in the private sector.”

Kramer says that she can envision a not-so-distant future in which online schools will be the only option for Ohio’s low-income students; anyone with the means will attend private and religious schools. “The people pushing this agenda don’t want a common good where everyone has a fair chance. A common good requires that you give citizens the tools they need to operate within the framework of democracy,” Kramer told me. “Everything that’s happening in Ohio is aimed at undermining that notion.”

The only good news is that Trump supporters seem as unhappy about that as do public education advocates.

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Funding, Ohio, Privatization

Florida: Stop the Charter Theft of Public Schools!

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2017 //
8

Kathleen Oporeza, executive director of Fund Education Now in Florida, urges all Florida citizens to contact their legislators–by email, by telephone, in person–and urge them to vote against any legislation that refers to “Schools of Hope,” which is a blatant effort to hand public schools over to charter entrepreneurs.

Urge the House & Senate to oppose any bill containing “Schools of Hope/HIgh Impact Charters” language

This dangerous concept has worked its way into at least a dozen bills, making it intentionally harder to track. All of this activity feeds the goal of making it easier to slip this bad public policy into one of several massive “train” bills far removed from public view.

Take action now. Tell our Senators and Representatives to oppose all bills, including HB 5105, SB 796, and SB 1552, that contain “Schools of Hope/High Impact Charter Networks” language.

“Schools of Hope”/“High Impact Charter Networks” create two separate, unequal publicly funded school systems – one under the control of duly elected school boards and the other controlled by outside private corporations under the direction of the appointed State Board of Education.

The deck is stacked. The BOE picks and chooses which district turnaround plans are accepted or rejected while at the same time exercising oversight authority over competing High Impact Charter Networks.

Because the BOE determines cut scores on state assessments and the calculation of school grades which can be manipulated to increase the number of D and F district schools this language will clearly drive the expansion of “Schools of Hope/High Impact Charter Networks.”

Use your voice now! One click easy. Please do not let “Schools of Hope/High Impact Charter Networks” trigger the immediate transfer of 115 “D & F” public schools and their 77K students into private, for-profit hands.

This isn’t about helping our most vulnerable students; it’s about promoting unmitigated charter school growth in an effort to erode district schools.

The Charter “Schools of Hope/High Impact Charter Networks” exponentially expand the effort to allow for-profit charters to keep grabbing tax dollars and tapping new markets to beef up the annual reports of corporate charter chains. None of this has been proven to help students or improve education.

Please tell the Florida Legislature to vote no on the “Schools of Hope/High Impact Charter Networks” language, SB 796, SB 1552 and HB 5105 with its $200M slush fund and block its inclusion in the Senate Budget and prevent it from being slipped by either chamber into a “train” bill.

Your voice has power. Our children are depending on us

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Fraud, Hoax, Privatization

Mark Miller: How Pennsylvania Charters Cash in

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2017 //
10

The Auditor General of the state of Pennsylvania once declared that Pennsylvania has”the worst charter school law in the nation.”

Mark Miller shows how hard it is to fix that law. Operators of charter schools and cyber charters are reaping huge profits. One cyber charter founder was found guilty of tax evasion on his huge profits. A charter owner built a massive mansion in Palm Beach.

Yet the legislature can’t rein them in. Every dollar they collect means a dollar less for public schools.

http://www.markbmiller.com/2017/04/20/charter-deform-made-its-way-to-pa-house-floor-today/

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Pennsylvania, Privatization, Virtual Charter Schools

Florida: Conspiracy Spotted! Privateers Hope to Get $200 Million to Open More Charters

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2017 //
10

Regular readers of this blog might find this article amusing. Public school activists in Florida are angry! The charter fans in the legislature want to allocate $200 million to encourage charters to locate in close proximity to schools with low grades. The extra $200 million will allow the charters to offer extra services that the public schools can’t afford. Meanwhile, the state plans to raise the passing scores on state tests, meaning that tens of thousands of students will be labeled “failing,” setting up more schools for takeover by charters.

The article calls this analysis–that the purpose of the $200 million “Schools of Hope” package is a giveaway to the privatization industry–a “conspiracy theory.”

Like if you see a bandit holding up a bank and call the police, you are really just indulging in a conspiracy theory.

Who are you going to believe: the people writing this dreadful legislation or your own eyes?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Florida, For-Profit, Hoax

How Jeb Bush and His Foundation for Educational Excellence Profited Their Corporate Sponsors

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2017 //
31

This is not a new article but it remains timely and worthy of your attention.

Jeb Bush runs an organization called the Foundation for Educational Excellence. Betsy DeVos was a member of his board. FEE receives corporate contributions. It works closely with ALEC, the rightwing corporate-sponsored organization that lobbies for charters, vouchers, and against teachers’ unions and tenure.

In the Public Interest was able to obtain a trove of emails that revealed the influence of FEE in several states, including Florida, New Mexico, Maine, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Rhode Island.

The e-mails are between the Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE) and a group Bush set up called Chiefs for Change, whose members are current and former state education commissioners who support Bush’s agenda of school reform, which includes school choice, online education, retention of third-graders who can’t read and school accountability systems based on standardized tests. That includes evaluating teachers based on student test scores and grading schools A-F based on test scores. John White of Louisiana is a current member, as is Tony Bennett, the new commissioner of Florida who got the job after Indiana voters rejected his Bush-style reforms last November and tossed him out of office.

Donald Cohen, chair of the nonprofit In the Public Interest, a resource center on privatization and responsible for contracting in the public sector, said the e-mails show how education companies that have been known to contribute to the foundation are using the organization “to move an education agenda that may or not be in our interests but are in theirs.”

He said companies ask the foundation to help state officials pass laws and regulations that make it easier to expand charter schools, require students to take online education courses, and do other things that could result in business and profits for them. The e-mails show, Cohen said, that Bush’s foundation would often do this with the help of Chiefs for Change and other affiliated groups.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Chiefs for Change, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Privatization, Testing

In the Public Interest: Why the Trump-DeVos Choice Agenda Won’t Work

By dianeravitch
April 22, 2017 //
15

Donald Cohen, executive director of the nonprofit group In the Public Interest, wrote the following (co-posted in Huffington Post):

Conservatives seem to have a thing for fast food.

The founder of what would eventually become the country’s largest private prison corporation, CoreCivic (formerly CCA), once declared, “You just sell [private prisons] like you were selling cars or real estate or hamburgers.” More recently, the Foundation for Excellence in Education, an organization founded by Jeb Bush that has lobbied for its corporate funders, including the world’s largest education corporation, Pearson, wrote that public schools should be thought of as fast food restaurants.

But providing public goods and services is nothing like selling hamburgers. In a democracy, human beings should control the public schools, infrastructure, and social services in their communities. Fast food customers vote individually with their wallets, which means they really have very little say. Does anyone really want a handful of corporations, the likes of McDonalds and Burger King, teaching children and locking people up in prison?

This point is especially true of public education, and is driven home by a report we released last week authored by Gordon Lafer, an associate professor at the University of Oregon. Lafer found that taxpayers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on charter school buildings in California, yet the state has little to show for it.

In the past 15 years, charter schools, which are privately operated, have received $2.5 billion in tax dollars or taxpayer subsidized financing to lease, build, or buy facilities. Yet much of this investment has gone to schools built in neighborhoods that don’t need them and schools that perform worse—according to charter industry standards—than nearby traditional public schools. Taxpayers have provided California’s underperforming charter schools—an astounding three-quarters of all the state’s charter schools!—with an estimated $750 million in direct funding.

Public support has even gone to California charter schools that discriminate against students with poor academic records, limited English-speaking skills, or disabilities. Taxpayers have given a collective $195 million to the 253 schools found by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California (ACLU) in August 2016 to have discriminatory enrollment policies.

Most alarming is the fact that much of the funding has gone to a handful of large charter school chains, and some have used the money to purchase private property. In Los Angeles, for example, the Alliance College-Ready Public Schools network of charter schools has used subsidiary corporations to build a growing empire of privately owned real estate now worth in excess of $200 million. State and federal taxpayers have given Alliance more than $110 million in support, yet, because of a loophole, the schools built with these funds will never belong to the public.

Simply put, California’s leaders are treating schools like fast food restaurants. Local school boards, who are democratically elected, have little say in whether a new charter school is good for their community’s students. The boards charged with authorizing new charters aren’t allowed to consider the impacts on existing public schools—or whether a school is even needed. On top of that, state and federal taxpayers are subsidizing failing and discriminatory charter schools to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

California needs common sense regulation that returns decisions about charter schools to local school districts. Short of that, the state is slowly handing the keys to its public education system over to the charter school industry and the likes of Donald Trump and new education secretary Betsy DeVos, who are pushing the “school choice” narrative.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bush, Jeb, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Privatization
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