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San Jose Mercury News: Online Charter Schools Are a Failure

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2016 //
12

Jesse Califati at the San Jose Mercury News wrote a stunning series about the failure of online charter schools, which are often referred to as virtual charters or cybercharters.

 

The first article is here. The second is here. The third is here. There are more and you will find them when you open the first article.

 

Here is the article with the industry’s defense of their defective product.

 

Cybercharters are a great business model; they are very profitable for the corporation. But they provide lousy education. That’s the bottom line.

 

Even corporate reformers like Whitney Tilson have given up on this industry because of its terrible performance in educating children.

 

As usual, the offending for-profit corporation is Michael Milken’s K-12 Inc., which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and has opened similar “schools” in many states.

 

Greed is not a good motivation for those involved in education. These virtual for-profit charters should be shut down.

 

 

Here is how the series begins:

 

 

The TV ads pitch a new kind of school where the power of the Internet allows gifted and struggling students alike to “work at the level that’s just right for them” and thrive with one-on-one attention from teachers connecting through cyberspace. Thousands of California families, supported with hundreds of millions in state education dollars, have bought in.

 

But the Silicon Valley-influenced endeavor behind the lofty claims is leading a dubious revolution. The growing network of online academies, operated by a Virginia company traded on Wall Street called K12 Inc., is failing key tests used to measure educational success.

 

Fewer than half of the students who enroll in the online high schools earn diplomas, and almost none of them are qualified to attend the state’s public universities.
An investigation of K12-run charter schools by this newspaper also reveals that teachers have been asked to inflate attendance and enrollment records used to determine taxpayer funding.

 

Launched with fanfare and promise, online schools such as K12 are compiling a spotty record nationwide, but highly motivated students with strong parental support can succeed in them. In California, however, those students make up a tiny fraction of K12’s enrollment. The result — according to an extensive review of complaints, company records, tax filings and state education data — is that children and taxpayers are being cheated as the company takes advantage of a systemic breakdown in oversight by local school districts and state bureaucrats.

 

At the same time, K12’s heavily marketed school model has been lucrative, helping the company rake in more than $310 million in state funding over the past 12 years, as well as enriching sponsoring school districts, which have little stake in whether the students succeed.

 

“Sometimes I feel like a terrible parent for enrolling them,” said Carol Brockmeier, a single mother from Santa Clara whose teenage daughters for a year attended K12’s San Mateo County-based academy, which serves an area stretching from Santa Cruz to San Francisco.
K12 is the nation’s largest player in the online school market. In California, it manages four times as many schools as its closest competitor, filling a small but unique niche among the state’s roughly 1,200 charter schools. And despite a dismal record of academic achievement in California and several other states — including Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee — the business regularly reports healthy profits.

“This company has shown an inordinate level of failure, yet it’s continually given lifelines by policymakers who have irresponsibly ignored what’s going on,” said Luis Huerta, a Columbia University associate professor of education and public policy who is one of the nation’s leading experts on online education.

TAKING A CLOSER LOOK

 

K12 was launched in 2000 by Ronald Packard, a former Goldman Sachs banker, and William Bennett, U.S. secretary of education under President Ronald Reagan, with seed money from Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison and disgraced junk bond king Michael Milken.

 

The company opened its first California Virtual Academies in San Diego, Kern and Tuolumne counties 14 years ago and has watched enrollment in the 17 schools it operates grow from several hundred students in 2002 to more than 15,000 today. Under state law, each academy may enroll students who live in adjoining counties. That means California children who live almost anywhere south of Humboldt County can sign up for one of K12’s schools.

 

To understand how the network of online academies operates, this newspaper reviewed hundreds of pages of education and tax records, examined complaints filed with public agencies and lawsuits, and interviewed dozens of parents, teachers and students affiliated, or once affiliated, with the schools. The investigation found:

 

• Students who spend as little as one minute during a school day logged on to K12’s school software may be counted as present in records used to calculate the amount of funding the schools get from the state.

 

• About half of the schools’ students are not proficient in reading, and only a third are proficient in math — levels that fall far below statewide averages.

 

• School districts that are supposed to oversee the company’s schools have a strong financial incentive to turn a blind eye to problems: They get a cut of the academies’ revenue, which largely comes from state coffers.

 

• Michael Kirst, president of the State Board of Education, worked for K12 as a consultant before Gov. Jerry Brown appointed him to the post in 2011. In March 2015, the board voted against shuttering a school run by the company that California Department of Education staff said should close because it was in financial disarray, marking the only time such a recommendation has been ignored.

 

K12 repeatedly declined this newspaper’s requests to interview its executives about its California schools’ academic programs and finances, citing an ongoing investigation by Attorney General Kamala Harris into California’s for-profit online schools. In a series of emails, however, K12 spokesman Mike Kraft defended the schools’ academic performance, arguing that “they will not have the same test scores as schools in high-funded districts with favorable demographics.”

 

“Many families choose online schools because they are fleeing a school or situation that wasn’t working for their child,” wrote Kraft, K12’s vice president for finance and communications. “Their academic performance expectations should be put into context.”

 

STUDENTS’ STRUGGLES

 

K12’s virtual schools have no classrooms, no buildings and no routine face-to-face interaction between teachers and students. Instead, teachers sign on mostly from home and connect to students over the Internet.

 

“Being in this school can feel so lonely,” said Alexandria Brockmeier, 17, who asked her mother to enroll her in an online school in late 2014 because she felt she didn’t fit in at Santa Clara High School.

 

Her school day began whenever she booted up her computer and logged on to the company’s programs. Since all lectures are recorded and can be listened to later, the students aren’t required to attend class or participate in real time. So, Alexandria said, she rarely did.

 

If questions popped up while she was working independently, she would often email her teachers seeking help. But Alexandria said they didn’t always respond and weren’t always available to tutor her one-on-one, even though the company heavily promotes personal attention in advertisements.

 

Kraft, K12’s spokesman, said the schools’ policy is for teachers to reply to student emails within 24 hours on school days, but most responses take far less time. Occasionally, however, responses take longer — for example, when teachers are out sick or on leave, he said.

 

Alexandria had been failing several of her classes when, in January, she suddenly lost access to K12’s software. Her mother, Carol, said she learned the following day that Alexandria and her sister, Jenna, had been locked out without warning because they’d fallen so far behind in their schoolwork.

 

“I’m disappointed in myself, my kids and this school system,” said Carol, who works full time at Mission College in Santa Clara and has been raising the girls on her own since her husband died in 2011 from early onset Alzheimer’s disease. “I’m stressed to the nth degree.”

 

As a special education student, Jenna — before she and her sister were forced to withdraw — was supposed to receive extra time to complete assignments and extra support from teachers. But, her mother said, she didn’t get it, and that made things even tougher for Jenna, 15.

 

“If I could stay home with the kids and say, ‘OK, let’s do this lesson,’ maybe it would have worked out for them,” Carol said.

 

Jenna isn’t the only K12 student in California who has gone without special education services, according to formal complaints filed by academy teachers with local school districts and county offices of education last year seeking investigations into the adequacy of special education provided by K12 schools. The services students are being denied range from speech therapy to counseling to daily in-person tutoring, the complaints allege.

 

Kraft said the company believes the complaints are “without merit.”

 

Not all parents and students are dissatisfied with the K12 model, which can work for highly motivated and closely monitored students such as Lillian Lewis, an 11-year-old Pleasanton gymnast who trains at least six hours a day and dreams of competing in the Olympics. That discipline, along with support from her parents, makes her a good fit for her online school, California Virtual Academy at San Joaquin.
“We didn’t know what to expect at first, but so far it’s working out great,” said Lillian’s mother, Milly, who signed her up last summer.

 

But most students who end up in online schools are far less successful.

 

Gabriela Novak says she pulled her daughter Elizabeth from K12’s San Mateo County school after a year because the difficulty communicating with her overworked, disorganized teachers was maddening. Throughout sixth grade, Elizabeth’s teachers repeatedly assured her mother and Elizabeth that she was all caught up with her assignments.

 

But at the end of the year, her report card showed several C’s because she was missing work she never knew had been assigned, her mother said. The experience shot the confidence of the onetime A student and left her desperately behind her peers academically when she enrolled in a San Francisco Unified brick-and-mortar school.

 

“She doesn’t believe in herself anymore,” Novak said. “We’re trying to get her back on track, but it’s not going to be easy.”

 

Kraft said that since parents and students can track online classwork in “near real-time,” the final grades shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

 

WIDESPREAD PROBLEMS

 

It’s not uncommon for students to struggle in online schools such as the ones run by K12, said Gary Miron, a professor of education at Western Michigan University and another leading expert in online education. He pointed to a study published in October by a research group called Mathematica that found the vast majority of students in online schools suffered because of the lack of a structured learning environment where live classroom attendance is required.

 

“A school that requires such little contact with teachers might be appropriate for students at the graduate level,” he said, “but it’s surely not appropriate for students in kindergarten through 12th grade.”

 

Kraft confirmed that the company’s schools do not require “live attendance.” Instead, he said, teachers work with students to develop a program that fits their individual needs.

 

A scathing report published in October by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes, or CREDO, found that most online charter students across the country had far weaker academic growth than their peers in brick-and-mortar public schools.

 

Each 180-day school year, students are supposed to gain an equivalent number of days of learning in each of their core subjects as measured by standardized state tests. Instead, online charter students nationwide are advancing the equivalent of only 108 days in reading compared with their peers. And they’re not advancing at all in math.

 

The students are learning so little in that subject that it’s as if they hadn’t attended a single math class all year. And in California, the Stanford report shows, the students attending online schools such as those operated by K12 and other smaller companies are falling 58 days of math instruction behind their peers rather than advancing 180 days.

 

Please open the link. There is much more about the waste of students’ time and taxpayers’ dollars on a massive and profitable scheme.

 

Categories For-Profit, Hoax, K12 Inc., Virtual Charter Schools

Anya Kamenetz: Pearson Is Creating a Worldwide For-Profit Educational Empire

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2016 //
24

Anya Kamenetz wrote an illuminating and actually frightening article about Pearson’s ambitious plans to introduce for-profit education around the world. I quote the article at length because it is so important. I urge you to read it in full. It appears in “Wired” magazine.

 

Kamenetz went to Manila where she interviewed a mother who sends her school owned by Pearson. The classes in the local public schools are larger than in the Pearson school, and the parent doesn’t want her son to go to school with “those other children.” She is willing and able to pay $2 a day to get something for her son.

 

The sign on the Pearson school says, “APEC Schools: Affordable World Class Education From Ayala and Pearson.”

 
APEC is “a different kind of school altogether: one that’s part of a for-profit chain and relatively low-cost at $2 a day, what you might pay for a monthly smartphone bill here. The chain is a fast-growing joint venture between Ayala, one of the Philippines’ biggest conglomerates, and Pearson, the largest education company in the world.

 

“In the US, Pearson is best known as a major crafter of the Common Core tests used in many states. It also markets learning software, powers online college programs, and runs computer-based exams like the GMAT and the GED. In fact, Nellie already knew the name Pearson from the tests and prep her sister took to get into nursing school.

 

“But the company has its eye on much, much more. Investment firm GSV Advisors recently estimated the annual global outlay on education at $5.5 trillion and growing rapidly. Let that number sink in for a second—it’s a doozy. The figure is nearly on par with the global health care industry, but there is no Big Pharma yet in education. Most of that money circulates within government bureaucracies.

 

“Pearson would like to become education’s first major conglomerate, serving as the largest private provider of standardized tests, software, materials, and now the schools themselves.

 

“To this end, the company is testing academic, financial, and technological models for fully privatized education on the world’s poor. It’s pursuing this strategy through a venture called the Pearson Affordable Learning Fund. Pearson allocated the fund an initial $15 million in 2012 and another $50 million in January 2015. Students in developing countries vastly outnumber those in wealthy nations, constituting a larger market for the company than students in the West. Here in the US, Pearson pursues its privatization agenda through charter schools that are run for profit but funded by taxpayers. It’s hard to imagine the company won’t apply what it learns from its global experiments as it continues to expand its offerings stateside.

 

“The low-cost schools in the Philippines are one of Pearson’s 11 equity investments in programs across Asia and Africa serving more than 360,000 students. Two of the most prominent, the Omega Schools in Ghana and Bridge International Academies based in Kenya, have hundreds of campuses charging as little as $6 a month. They locate in cheaply rented spaces, hire younger, less-experienced teachers, and train and pay them less than instructors at government-run schools. The company argues that by using a curriculum reflecting its expertise, plus digital technology—computers, tablets, software—it can deliver a more standardized, higher-quality education at a lower cost per student. All Pearson-backed schools agree to test students frequently and use software and analytics to track outcomes.

 
“Not every Pearson-backed chain will succeed, but the company can use the outcomes to assess which models work best. Pearson will have a stake in the winners; the Affordable Learning Fund takes at least one seat on each board. The goal is to serve more than a million students by 2020….

 

“Pearson’s corporate reputation doesn’t help matters. In the US, just the mention of its name is enough to make some education activists apoplectic. In 2014 the company was implicated in an FBI investigation of unfair bidding practices for a $1.3 billion deal to provide curricula via iPads to the students of Los Angeles Unified School District. Meanwhile, in New Jersey, Pearson monitored the social media accounts of students taking its Common Core tests and had state officials call district superintendents to have students disciplined for talking about the exam. Barber himself points out to me that his face appears as “the seventh-scariest person in education reform” on an anti-Common Core website.

 

“Yet in many parts of the world, low-cost private schools are a big step up from existing public schools, where buildings may be falling down, philanthropic grants are used to line local officials’ pockets, and teachers don’t bother to show up. The father of Nobel laureate and youth education advocate Malala Yousafzai himself started a chain of low-cost private schools in Pakistan.

 

“Barber’s thesis is simple: If his company can offer a better option, millions of families…will vote with their feet. “Technology and globalization are going to change everything, including the status quo in education,” he says….

 

“Because space is tight, the schools have no nurse’s office and no science lab. Some have no gym or play space. One amenity offered everywhere is closed-circuit cameras, a nod to parents’ paramount concern: physical safety.

 

“Pearson models do vary by setting and the visions of individual entrepreneurs. All of them, though, save money on teachers and claim they still deliver a superior education—even though most research shows that teacher quality is the single most important factor in a student’s education. Donnelly and Barber draw parallels to US charter schools, which employ younger, less-experienced teachers without union protections, and to Teach for America, which places recent college grads into the country’s most challenging classrooms with just five weeks of training….

 

 

“But a matchup between a $9 billion public company and the impoverished governments of developing countries looks lopsided, to say the least. If Pearson achieves its vision, only the most destitute would remain in public schools in the world’s largest and fastest-growing cities. Or those schools would close down altogether, as governments increasingly outsource education—a fundamental driver of development and democracy, a basic human right, and a tool of self-determination—to a Western corporation. Teaching would become a low-paid, transient occupation requiring little training. And Pearson would try to bring the lessons it learns in Africa and Asia to education markets in the US and the UK.

 

 

“One morning in Manila, I had breakfast at a five-star hotel with James Centenera, who…was key to launching the APEC schools. In his view, for-profit schools have quickly become an accepted part of the educational landscape here—just another option. “I’m glad people have stopped asking whether the schools are better.” Startled, I realized his remark spoke to a mantra of Barber’s: irreversibility.

 
“In other words, create enough momentum around any change and you’re no longer arguing the merits of your idea. You’re simply treating it as a fact on the ground and rallying others to the cause.

 

 

“What makes this a most effective path to change is also what makes it terrifying and infuriating to critics. Inserting itself into the provision of a basic human service, Pearson is subject to neither open democratic decisionmaking nor open-market competition. The only check on its progress will be the tests that Pearson itself creates.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, International, Pearson, Privatization, Standardized Testing, Technology

C. Patrick Burrowes: Liberia Does Not Need For-Profit Schools

By dianeravitch
April 15, 2016 //
9

C. Patrick Burrowes is anoxia list who was born in Liberia and educated in the United States. He is very concerned about a pending deal to outsource Liberian education to Bridge International Academies, which USA for-profit company controlled by American investors, including Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.

 

 

Burrowes writes:

 

 

A Bridge Academies investor goes on the offensive:

http://ssir.org/articles/entry/a_big_problem_a_small_experiment_and_a_lot_of_noise

 

I expect Kevin Starr (as an investor in Bridge Academies) to support the company’s take over of Liberian elementary schools. After all, this deal would result in rapid returns on his investments. Too bad, he resorts to playing loose with the facts while smearing critics.

 

He begins by mislabeling Bridge as an “African” company. He would be hard pressed to name a single African investor in the exclusive white male Silicon Valley backers of this venture. If Africans and others are crying foul, it’s because we seen these “well-intentioned” schemes play out to our detriment time and time again. And when it all comes crashing down, Kevin and all the other we-know-better-than-Africans-what’s-best-for-them set will be nowhere around to pick up the pieces.

 

If the school-in-box rote-teaching method employed by Bridge Academies is so great, why not sell it in the U. S. first? Truth is, the company is a bottom feeder, preying on the weakest of the weak. It avoids countries where educational and teaching standards are enforced.

 

Far from encouraging competition (as Kevin suggested), the company secured its take-over of Liberian school through a no-bid process from a government noted for high levels of corruption, even by African standards.

 

The author claims this deal isn’t going to make anyone a ton of money, as if Bridge Academies is a non-profit. Far from it, the company’s own pitch to investors highlights the obscene profits to be made in this “market,” meaning its automaton schools for producing uncritical worker bees.

 

Kevin is dismissive of “tribal” rights and adopts a breezing tone that’s completely inappropriate given the gravity of what’s at stake. Bridge Academies and its know-it-all fat cats are not only endangering the future of Liberia. They are also putting at risk the principle of universal public education, which has benefited their societies for hundreds of years. All on a whim and with the cockiness of a high-roller at a craps table.

 

I wonder if he would be so cavalier about radical policy changes that affected the education of his kids?

 
C. Patrick Burrowes

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

California Charter Game: Rejected by District, Rejected by County, Appeal to State and….

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2016 //
17

District officials in California have confided in me that it is virtually impossible to stop a charter proposal, no matter how bad it is or how little it is needed. If the district turns down the proposal, the charter advocates appeal to the Los Angeles County School Board, where they are often approved. In the off-chance that both the district and the county turn down their proposal, the advocates appeal to the state, where they are almost certain to win approval.

 

Here is an example.

 

Two parents proposed to open a dual-language immersion school that would teach Spanish, German, Italian, and French. The school would be called the International Studies Language Academy. The Glendale school board voted against the proposal, 5-0. The proponents appealed to the County office, which did an extensive review and turned them down, 5-1.

 

Staff at the Los Angeles County Office of Education weighed the petition as part of the Charter School Review Team, made up of county officials drawn from various departments, including the controller’s office, the curriculum department and the division of accountability.

 

County officials determined the plan “provides an unsound educational program” and that the petitioners “are demonstrably unlikely to successfully implement the proposed educational program,” according to the report.

 

“We’re disappointed, but know the political climate is tough for charters in the L.A. area right now,” Bonacci said in an email.

 

Similar to Glendale school board members, county officials found several faults with the school’s financial plan and deemed it “unrealistic,” in the report, highlighting how the school underestimated teacher salaries, benefits and the cost for books and materials.

 

In another instance, county officials noted that the school planned to mail bank statements directly to Academica, a Florida-based charter school operator.

 

The school’s lack of internal control in processing checks “can result in fiscal mismanagement,” the report stated.

 

Despite those findings, the petition has won support from the California Charter Schools Assn., whose manager for regional advocacy, Allison Hendrick, urged that the county board approve the appeal.

 

Ah, so the school will be managed by Academica, the political powerhouse in Florida that operates for profit. Due diligence would suggest that the California officials learn more about Academica, whose owners have assembled a vast real estate empire. In Florida, Academica had the help of a state senator who chairs the education appropriations committee. Who will help them in California?

 

Let’s see what happens to this petition, where local officials declared it to be pedagogically and financially unsound.

 

 

Categories California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Privatization

Steven Singer: Charter Lobby Donates $50,000 to Candidate Backed by Pennsylvania Teachers’ Union

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2016 //
8

Now here is a conundrum: Why would the charter school lobby donate $50,000 to a candidate for State Attorney General who is already backed by the Pennsylvania State Education Association, the teachers’ union?

 

Steven Singer poses that question here. Pennsylvania is a state that is rife with charter school scandals. Such scandals would normally be investigated by the State Attorney General. Duh. If Josh Shapiro gets elected, let’s see how vigorous in investigating the scandals that Singer links to in his blog, and how vigorously he prosecutes the charlatans and frauds who are profiting off the gullibility of parents.

 

Singer asks:

 

 

What’s the best way to avoid a charter school scandal?

In Pennsylvania, apparently you bribe the Attorney General.

 

That may be why Students First PAC donated $50,000 to Josh Shapiro, a Democrat running for the position.

 

This political action committee is not to be confused with the infamous national group founded by Michelle Rhee. Students First PAC is a state organization that typically contributes to charter school friendly candidates.

 

And $50K is quite a chunk of change in a State Attorney General race – the office in charge of prosecuting charter schools for breaking the law.

 

 

Charter school scandals have been an almost weekly occurrence throughout the Commonwealth. Chester Community Charter School, the state’s largest brick-and-mortar organization, is under investigation for pocketing $1.2 million “in improper lease-reimbursement payments.” As Philadelphia public schools are being closed due to a miserly state budget, “nonprofit,” charter operator Aspira Inc. was caught using public money to boost its real estate holdings instead of using those funds to educate children. Nicholas Trombetta, the founder of Pennsylvania’s largest cyber charter, an institution that operates exclusively over the internet, “was charged with fraud, for funneling $8 million of the school’s funds into his personal companies and holdings.”

 

It’s easy to see how having the state Attorney General on your side would benefit an industry rife with fraud and malfeasance.

 

Shapiro, chair of the Montgomery Country Board of Commissioners, is the odds on favorite to succeed Kathleen Kane as the state’s highest ranking law enforcement officer.

 

He is running for the Democratic nomination against Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli, and Allegheny Country Attorney General Stephen Zappala.

 

Despite strong corporate education reform ties, Shapiro has been endorsed by the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA), the largest teachers union in the Commonwealth.

 

Categories Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Pennsylvania, Virtual Charter Schools

Julian Vasquez Heilig Will Open New Center for the Study of Education Profitization

By dianeravitch
April 1, 2016 //
11

Julian Vasquez Heilig announced on his blog that he will soon open a new “center” for the study and support of Education Profitization.

 

He says he has pledges of $10 million each from the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the Arnold Foundation, and the Donald Trump Business Casual Clothing Foundation.

 

Where is the Walton Foundation?

 

Heilig writes:

 

I sincerely hope that the new Center will work closely with the University of Arkansas College of Education Faculty, Fordham Foundation, ALEC, BAEO, Education Next, Libre and every other neoliberal so we can make this money.

Categories Corporate Reform, Education Industry, For-Profit

California Judge Orders Failed For-Profit Corinthian Colleges to Pay Students $1.1 Billion

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2016 //
49

California’s Attorney General Kamala D. Harris won a settlement in excess of $1.1 billion against defunct for-profit Corinthian Colleges for defrauding students  with false advertising. There is a website in the linked article where students can apply for restitution. Since the corporation is bankrupt, they may never see any repayment. The entire for-profit sector is a mighty scam; they should all be tightly regulated for fraud and predatory practices. Or shut down before more students are ripped off.

 

The Los Angeles Times reported:

 

 

Granting a default judgment, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Curtis Karnow found that Corinthian Colleges provided untrue or misleading statements about graduates’ job placement rates, duping both students and investors, and that the Santa Ana-based company unlawfully used U.S. military seals in advertisements, among other claims.
The for-profit college operator, which filed for bankruptcy protection in May, was also faulted for advertising programs or degrees that it didn’t offer, such as training programs for X-ray and dialysis technicians, according to court papers.

 

The judgment found that Corinthian and its subsidiaries had unfair and unlawful debt collection practices, including barring students from attending classes if they were behind on loan payments, and that they failed to disclose their role in the “Genesis loan” program.

 

Corinthian Colleges, along with its Heald College business, were also faulted for misrepresenting the likelihood of whether academic credits earned at their programs could be transferred to the Cal State system, according to court papers.

 

In his 21-page judgment, Karnow ordered restitution of $820 million for students and civil penalties of just more than $350 million.
“For years, Corinthian profited off the backs of poor people — now they have to pay. This judgment sends a clear message: There is a cost to this kind of predatory conduct,” Harris said in a statement.

 

Harris filed suit against Corinthian Colleges Inc. and its subsidiaries in 2013, accusing the company of targeting low-income students with a “predatory scheme,” touting untrue job placement rates.

 

The attorneys for Corinthian did not appear at hearings, because they say the  corporation is bankrupt and there is no one to represent.

 

 

 

 

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

News! Michelle Rhee is Merging StudentsFirst with 50CAN

By dianeravitch
March 29, 2016 //
31

The world of rightwing corporate reform is ever-changing. It seems like only yesterday that Michelle Rhee announced her intention to challenge teachers’ unions, destroy tenure, and take away due process from teachers across the nation. She said she would raise $1 billion in a year and gather 1 million members for her new organization, which she called StudentsFirst, because (she said) teachers don’t care about students, only billionaires really care. She did raise some money–only $7 million or so, far from $1 billion–and she spent it trying to elect Tea Party Republicans and others who support charters and vouchers. Her organization turned into the public voice of anti-teacher, anti-public school activism. But in 2014, she stepped back from the national stage to help her husband Kevin Johnson, the Mayor of Sacramento (whom she married in 2011), and joined the board of Scott’s Miracle-Gro. She also assumed the chairmanship of her husband’s charter chain, St. Hope.

 

And now we learn that Michelle Rhee is folding the tents of StudentsFirst and merging it with 50CAN. The latter organization is funded by hedge fund managers and the Sackler family of Connecticut, whose fortune was made from pharmaceuticals, specifically the opiod drug Oxycontin, that is now causing so much addiction and death across the nation. Forbes says they are the 16th richest family in America. Jonathan Sackler’s daughter Madeleine made a documentary about Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter chain called “The Lottery.” It gave viewers the impression that these were the world’s most magical schools, and any child lucky enough to win the lottery would have a blessed life. Never having attended a public school, she bought into the myth that they are horrid places that one must escape from, and that charter schools are sort of like the private school she attended in Greenwich.

 

The leader of StudentsFirst is Jim Blew, who most recently worked for the Walton Family Foundation (e.g., Walmart money), which funds StudentsFirst, Teach for America, KIPP, and every organization that promotes the privatization of public education. Now Blew will head the California branch of StudentsFirst, whatever is left of it after the merger.

 

What a close and tight knit world the corporate reformers live in!

 

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization, Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst, Testing

Liberians Oppose Privatization of Their Schools

By dianeravitch
March 27, 2016 //
13

As previously reported here, the Liberian government is considering a plan to privatize and outsource control of its schools. The good news is that Liberians are fighting back against this proposal.

 

“Local and international experts have planned to fight tooth and nails to ensure that a plan by the Government of Liberia to outsource all primary education here to a private company do not push through.

 
“Liberia’s plan is to privatise all primary and pre-primary schools over the next five years. Public funding will support services subcontracted to a private company – the Bridge International Academies, a company incorporated in the United States under the name New Globe School Inc.

 
“Already the Liberian Government through Education Minister George Werner has signed a Memorandum of Understanding or MOU with the Bridge International Academies to kick start the process-a pilot project is said to be ongoing with 70 schools.

 
“The cash scrap government of Liberia is expected to spend around US430 million over the five years period. There is also a question as to whether the PPCC rules were followed in awarding such contract to Bridge International Academies.

 
“International and local experts say such arrangement is not only a blatant violation of Liberia’s international obligations under the right to education, and have no justification under Liberia’s constitution, but will also deny indigents and poor access to quality education.
Mrs. Hester Williams Katakaw is the Proprietress of the Levi Williams School System and a former deputy education minister for instruction under President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s first term. She says education stakeholders here will not allow such arrangement to push through.

 
“We will resist it and make sure that it does not go through at the National Legislature”, Mrs. Williams Katakaw told this paper Wednesday. She says government has a responsibility to ensure that all children here are educated and that pushing such responsibility on a foreign firm is not in the best interest of Liberian children.

 
“Mrs. Katakaw questions the performance of Bridge International in other countries saying, “they have failed miserably in other countries and we are not going to allow them to come do the same here”. She says Liberian children at those tender ages should be educated by Liberian teachers and not foreigners.

 
“Education Minister Werner appears very defensive on this arrangement. In his letter dated March 3, 2016 addressed to the Secretary General of the National Teachers’ Association of Liberia or NTAL, Mr. Samuel Y. Johnson, Sr. following the launched of a pilot project involving 70 schools, he said the pilot project is a private partnership and not privatization.

 
“…I must correct your characterization of the pilot as privatization, and somehow threatening the provision of free education. As we have communicated to your members including at the January meeting, the pilot will not involve any privatization of education…”

 
“However, following this communication an agreement was entered into with Bridge International. When this paper contacted officials at the Ministry of Information Wednesday, its Communications Director Maxim Bleteen handed copies of the minister’s letter to the NTAL saying the minister had requested him to give a copy to any reporter seeking information on the privatization deal.

 
“He claimed that the letter addressed the issue of the Public Procurement Concession Commission rules but nothing of such was mentioned. “It is completely unacceptable for Liberia to outsource its primary education system to a private company”, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to education, Kishore Singh said Tuesday in Geneva.

 
“This is unprecedented at the scale currently being proposed and violates Liberia’s legal and moral obligations,” he said. “Such arrangements are a blatant violation of Liberia’s international obligations under the right to education, and have no justification under Liberia’s constitution,” the Special Rapporteur stated.

 
“This also contradicts political commitments made by Liberia and the international community to the fourth UN Sustainable Development Goal which is on education and related targets.” He cautions that public schools and their teachers, and the concept of education as a public good, are under attack with such arrangements.

 
“Provision of public education of good quality is a core function of the State. Abandoning this to the commercial benefit of a private company constitutes a gross violation of the right to education,” Mr. Singh emphasized.

 
The human rights expert noted that “it is ironic that Liberia does not have resources to meet its core obligations to provide a free primary education to every child, but it can find huge sums of money to subcontract a private company to do so on its behalf.”

 
“These sums could be much better spent on improving the existing system of public education and supporting the educational needs of the poor and marginalized,” the Special Rapporteur suggested. Mr. Singh called on the Government of Liberia to approach the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for technical assistance and capacity building, instead of entering into such partnerships with for-profit providers in education, “devoid of any legal or moral justification.”

 
“Before any partnership is entered into, the Government of Liberia must first put into place legislation and policies on public private partnerships in education, which among other things, protect every child’s right to education,” Mr. Singh said.

 
“There also needs to be an independent body or institution established to receive complaints of potential violations of the right to education that might result from this development,” he added. The Special Rapporteur emphasized that “education is an essential public service and instead of supporting business in education, governments should increase the money they spend on public educational services to make them better.”

 
“In a letter addressed to President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf dated March 21, 2016, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC-Africa) called on president Sirleaf to halt the planned outsourcing of primary education here.

 
“…this policy will seriously undermine the right to educate and eclipse opportunities for indigent and poor individuals, families and communities to use education to claw out of poverty and hardship,” the letter signed by Kwasi Adu -Amankwah, ITUC-Africa General Secretary said .

 
“The ITUC-Africa (www.ituc-africa.org) is a Pan African trade union organisation representing over 17 million workers in 49 African countries, including Liberia. In its letter ITUC-Africa further stated “ITUC-Africa is supporting and strongly reiterating the calls by the National Teachers’ Association of Liberia (NTAL) and the Educational International (EI) urging your government to halt the proposed measure to outsource Liberia’s primary education system to private for-profit actors.”

 
“ITUC-Africa therefore urges Madam President to use her good offices and goodwill to stay action on the implementation of this policy,” the union added. The PPCC Director of Communications Nathan Bangu promised to return a call requesting information on as to whether Minister Werner got the PPCC barking before signing an MOU with Bridge International Academies.”

 

 

Categories Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, International, Privatization

Florida: How Charters Cleaned Up in the Closing Hours of the Legislative Session

By dianeravitch
March 23, 2016 //
12

Paula Dockery, a former Republican legislator in Florida, explains how last-minute legislative maneuvering enables special interests to cram their priorities into overstuffed bills and into law. The writing of a bill in the closing days of the session, she says, is like a train running down the tracks. All kinds of things get added without public discussion.

 

 

The charter industry has been a beneficiary of these tactics.

 

 

Dockery writes:

 

 

“The final bill is a conglomeration of unrelated and contentious education policies. It allows students to transfer to any public school anywhere in the state if there is capacity — a nightmare for school district planning and budgeting. It allows high school athletes who change schools to be immediately eligible to play — which opens up high school athletics to potential recruiting.

 

 

“It financially punishes school districts for overspending on construction while making it easier for charter schools to get access to capital funding. It attempts to weaken the school board membership association that often disagrees with legislative policy changes. It relies on performance measures to determine college and university funding.

 

 

“On a positive note, it creates a funding formula for charter school capital costs that favors charters that serve poor and disabled students.

 

 

“Unfortunately, a key Senate proposal that prevented charter school operators from using public funds to build or improve facilities they own for their private gain was removed from the bill at the House’s insistence. Wasn’t this the reason for the train in the first place?”

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Florida, For-Profit
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