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Civil Society Groups in Kenya Speak Out Against Commercialization and Privatization of Education

By dianeravitch
February 2, 2016 //
5

 

The following statement was written and released by a group of non-governmental organizations concerned about the growing movement to privatize education in Kenya. They call here for resistance to the introduction of for-profit organizations and for the building of a genuine free public education for all children. Pearson is one of the prime movers behind for-profit Bridge International Academy and Omega.

 

 

 

Screen shot 2016-01-29 at 7.46.00 PM

Joint Statement

 

Students before profit: Teacher unions and civil society unite to condemn the commercialisation of education in Kenya

 

Tuesday 26th January, 2016 (Nairobi)

 

According to Article 53 of the Constitution of Kenya 2010 every child has the immediate right to free and compulsory basic education. This is emphasised in Section 28 of the Basic Education Act 2013 and Section 7 of the Children’s Act 200.

 

The 2009 Policy for Alternative Provision of Basic Education and Training (APBET), recognises alternative or ‘non formal’ schools. Under this policy, non-formal schools have fewer requirements in terms of curriculum, infrastructure and teacher qualification.

 

The original intention of APBET recognition and support for non-formal schools was to provide access to education to children who would have otherwise been unable to attend the formal education system do to the unavailability of an adequate number of public schools. However, this policy has allowed big corporations and edu-businesses to benefit from these lower legal requirements and profit from the delivery of non-formal education in areas of the country that remain largely under-served by public schools.

 

These unintended consequences have drawn the attention of the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights all of which have expressed concern over the growing privatisation of education and fee charging for-profit schools in Kenya such as Bridge International Academies.

 

Most recently, on 21st January 2016, the 71st session of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child asked the Kenyan government to respond to the growing privatisation of education, specifically the impact of Bridge on the quality of education in Kenya. Olga Khazova, UN Committee member and Rapporteur for Kenya stated: “There are regulations on the quality of education children should receive but when it comes to Bridge, these regulations seem not to be enforced. What is the government doing about this?”

 

This follows from concerns expressed in November 2015 by the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (UNCESCR). Specifically, it asked “how the State party has regulated and monitored informal private schools, or low-cost private schools, to ensure quality education.”

 

Similarly, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights questioned the definition of “non-formal schools” by the Kenyan Government. It asked: “Why are private school chains, such as Bridge International Academies, registered as non-formal schools, whereas they appear to offer formal education?”

 

In May 2015, 116 organisations across the world expressed their deep concerns about the World Bank’s support for Bridge International Academies.

 

Bridge is a multinational chain of low-fee profit-making private primary schools targeting poor families in Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria. It has over 400 schools in Kenya. In Kenya, it is exploiting a loophole in regulations allowing it to register as ‘non formal’ schools instead of private schools.

 

The school chain has recently come under scrutiny over its opposition to new guidelines by the Kenya Cabinet Secretary for Education aimed at ensuring basic standards in non-formal schools such as the recruitment of qualified teachers.

 

The expansion of Bridge is a manifestation of the growing commercialisation and privatisation of education in Kenya. This commercialisation and privatisation of education represents one of the greatest threats to the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals adopted in September 2015.

 

This threat has also been recognised by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to Education, Kishore Singh, who warned that “soon, it may not be an exaggeration to say that privatization is supplanting public education instead of supplementing it”, where “inequalities in opportunities for education will be exacerbated by the growth of unregulated private providers of education, with economic condition, wealth or property becoming the most important criterion for gaining access to education”.

 

 

Teacher unions and civil society therefore, call on the government to

 

  • close existing legislative and regulatory loopholes and ensure compliance in relation to minimum national standards with respect to the provision of education. Registration of schools must be conditional on full compliance with minimum standards.

 

  • fulfil its obligations consistent with the UN Sustainable Development Goal 4. By adopting the Sustainable Development Goals governments have committed to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. Target 4.1 requires governments to ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes.

 

  • fulfil its primary obligation to properly and adequately fund free quality education for all children regardless of the background. This is crucial to Kenya’s future prosperity.

 

 

 

Signed,

 

Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT)

East African Centre for Human Rights (EACHRights)

Economic and Social Rights Centre – (Hakijamii)

Action Aid-Kenya

Kenya Union of Post Primary Teachers (KUPPET)

Universities Academic Staff Union

International Commission of Jurists – Kenya Chapter

Katiba Institute

The Cradle

Transparency International – Kenya

Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

Education International

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

The Failure of Private Management in Gary, Indiana

By dianeravitch
February 1, 2016 //
10

Under Indiana’s former Secretary of Education Tony Bennett, the state determined to crack down on low-performing schools. Five schools were handed over to private management. The result was a disaster. Four schools made no progress at all. Enrollment plummeted at all the takeover schools.

 

 
Two recent comments point up the failure of private management in running public services. You would think that public officials would look at the record and stop privatizing public services and instead work to improve them.

 

 

Reader Chiara writes:

 

“What I love about the (bipartisan) mania for “running government like a business” is how they seem incapable of delivering basic government services.

 
“It’s the worst of both worlds. It’s not good government and it’s not good private sector. It’s this awful hybrid that we seem to be stuck with. Can we have two sectors again- a public sector and a private sector? Can we hire some people who don’t have complete contempt for the public sector they’re supposed to be improving?”

 

 
Another reader recounts the failure of private corporation Edison in Gary, Indiana.

 

 

“Roosevelt school in Gary, IN was taken over a few years ago by EdisonLeaning, a for profit charter school. There is a legal battle between the Gary Community Schools and EdisonLearning as to who is responsible for fixing up the school which is falling apart.

 

 

“Here is a partial quote from The Times of NW Indiana.

 

 

“GARY — As temperatures dipped below 20 degrees, Gary Roosevelt students and teachers stood outside the school Wednesday protesting a lack of heat in the building and the ability to get a quality education.

 
“Students have rarely been in the building since they returned from the Christmas holiday. The school was dismissed a half-day on a couple of days because of problems with the boilers that heat the building. It closed Jan. 8 due to the lack of heat and again Wednesday.

 
“The school is scheduled to be closed Thursday and Friday for development days.

 
“The students say enough is enough.

 
“Roosevelt senior Cary Martin said it’s really bad inside the building.

 
“Some of us have come to expect not being in the building because it’s too cold,” he said.

 
“This happens every year, but it’s time for a change. This is affecting our education. This is really sad.”

 
“He said there are also problems with water inside the building, with few water fountains working and none of the showers in the locker rooms.

 
“Some of my colleagues and friends stink after class because they can’t wash up,” Martin said.

 
“Food is also an issue, along with mold and damage in the school’s band room.

 
“In January 2014, due to the heating failures, a number of pipes burst causing the hallways near the gym to flood with up to 2 inches of water. In June 2014, Indiana American Water Co. turned off the water due to a lack of payment on the bill.

 

“Freshman English teacher Brandi Bullock said the temperature in the hallways ranges in the 40s, while the classroom temperatures are sporadic with some warm classrooms and others freezing.

 
“The problem is that we can’t be in the classrooms because there are not enough warm spaces,” she said. “It used to be that the library was a warm respite from the cold but the boiler that supported that room is not working.”

Categories Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Indiana

New Jersey Dems Want Social Impact Bonds to Reduce Special Education, Reward Investors

By dianeravitch
December 19, 2015 //
23

New Jersey Democrat Theresa Ruiz, chair of the Senate Education Committee, has a truly terrible idea. She wants to introduce “social impact bonds” that would pay off investors to reduce special education referrals. The assumption behind the bonds is that high-quality pre-K can reduce the need for special education.

A parent blogger was aghast and sees these bonds as an effort to end special education.

The blogger writes:

“What is Senator Ruiz attempting to achieve? Her statement, “we won’t have to have early-intervention programs and classification and wrap-around services because we did the work early on” is naive at best and potentially destructive at worst.

“High quality” Pre-K is not a magic bullet. Students with disabilities will not be magically cured by attending preschool. It sounds too good to be true because it is. New Jersey’s classification rate is about 14.5%, higher in low-income districts where this program will take place.

“Will preschool help decrease the percentage of students who need special education services in those districts? I have no doubt that it will. The research supports that presumption.

“Are you going to end the need for Early Intervention, classification, and wrap-around services? No. You aren’t. There will always be students who would have been classified no matter how much preschool they had. There will always be students who need wrap-around services because we, as country, much less as a state, are doing nothing to address the poverty that creates the need for these services.

“Big picture here is, Goldman Sachs is going to make money on students NOT being classified. RtI is going to become the framework for K-12, delaying as long as possible the identification and classification of students with disabilities. And the Special Education Ombudsman position the Senator is trying to create (because constituents have been begging for help) will work for the NJ Department of Education.”

A reader posted a comment about her own children.

“OMG! We won’t have to have early intervention because we have high quality PreK!

“I have three kids. One reg ed., one legally blind, one entered school as profoundly autistic.

“How, precisely, would the most awesome preK in the world have helped my one year old legally blind child? Who would have taught me to teach him?

“Would great preK have made my autistic kid neurally typical?

“Would NOT classifying them have led to educational success? Does Ruiz honestly believe that neither kid would need special ed if they got great preK?
$1700 a year would not have paid for OT!(and, strangely enough, legally blind kids have issues with hand eye coordination !)

“I am way to hot to write to her right now. I will gather my thoughts and write a letter.

“Thanks. I didn’t know Ruiz was so short sighted as to believe no child could possibly remain disabled when they had great preK.”

Categories Democrats, Early Childhood Education, For-Profit, New Jersey, Special Education

A Guide to Social Impact Bonds

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2015 //
2

“In the Public Interest” is an organization dedicated to warning the public about the dangers of privatizing public services.

 

It has written a guidebook to explain to citizens what Social Impact Bonds are, how they work, who they benefit, and why they are dangerous for our society.

 

Shar Habibi, ITPI’s director of research, writes:

 

“Our guide is a must-read for any citizen or decision-maker trying to understand these new financing structures. It will help you ask tough questions to ensure that private dollars don’t create perverse incentives, fail to serve the neediest cases (also known as ‘creaming’), or distort measures of success for our most important social services.

“Ultimately, Pay for Success ignores the deeper cause of many of our growing social problems: underinvestment in the public interest. America desperately needs more investment in all our public services. Prevention-focused public funding of critical public services—like pre-K for all children and help for juveniles who end up in the criminal justice system—is our simplest and least expensive solution.”

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Education Reform, For-Profit, Funding, Privatization

What Are Social Impact Bonds and Why They Are a Very Bad Idea

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2015 //
9

Rick Cohen, a journalist for the Nonprofit Quarterly, wrote this article about social impact bonds in 2014. Rick died suddenly a few weeks ago, and it was a great loss. He was a fighter for social justice. When he led the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, he lacerated the Walton Family Foundation for its greedy, self-serving ways in two reports. After he left NCRP, this year’s report on the Waltons treated the far-right foundation with kid gloves, almost praising its lust to eliminate unions and public education.

 

In Rick’s article of 2014, he explains what social impact bonds are and why they are a terrible idea. He would have been outraged to see them embedded in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, now called (absurdly) the Every Child Succeeds Act, which is a different way of saying “no child left behind.”

 

Rick offers eight reasons to worry about social impact bonds (“pay for success”), which were then a new idea.

 

Here is one of them:

 

Is it possible that a potential SIB/PFS downside is that private capital might overly influence the decision-making and priorities of government through the SIB/PFS model? As one advocate testified in a Congressional hearing, a SIB “improves decision-making by bring market discipline to government decisions about which programs to expand, as investors will only put their dollars behind programs with a strong evidence base.” If government overly focuses on programs that will attract private investors, the results might work to the investors’ benefit, but not necessarily to the benefit of appropriately identifying and prioritizing social initiatives that don’t generate private capital interest. Should private investors determine “which programs to expand,” or should public debate and discussion in a democratic process about human needs be the determining factors?

 

Is the investment “for the kids” or “for the investors”? Let the market decide. Rick would not agree.

 

R.I.P. to Rick Cohen. He will be sorely missed.

Categories Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit

Bruce Baker and Gary Miron: The Business of Charters, Or, The Charter Gravy Train

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2015 //
10

Bruce Baker and Gary Miron have written an important new study of the business of charters. It was released overnight by the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado. The report proposes regulation of charter schools to remove the corruption and money-making that is currently an embarrassment to the charter sector. So far, so good. As I have told the authors, I don’t agree with their proposal that states declare charter schools to be public schools and to regulate them as public schools. Several states already have labeled them public schools and don’t regulate them. In those states where the governor and the legislature have been captured by charter industry financiers, it is not likely that there will be either regulation, transparency, or accountability because the lobbyists will never accept it. Nonetheless, this is an important report because it lays out the specific ways in which charter operators have gamed the system for the sake of lucre.

 

The Lucrative Side of Charter Schools

 

New report puts first pieces together on how charter schools are profiting through the privatization of public assets

 

Contact:

William J. Mathis, (802) 383-0058, wmathis@sover.net
Bruce D. Baker, (848) 932-0698, bruce.baker@gse.rutgers.edu Gary Miron, (269) 599-7965, gary.miron@wmich.edu

 

URL for this press release: http://tinyurl.com/py94cuk

 

BOULDER, CO (December 10, 2015) – Charter schools are educational providers, but they are also businesses. A large portion of them are run by private corporations, and receive taxpayer dollars to provide their services. Yet there is very little public understanding of the often- convoluted ways these companies use those dollars and take advantage of laws in ways that enrich owners, officers, and investors.

 

A new research brief from Bruce Baker and Gary Miron details some of the ways that individuals, companies, and organizations secure financial gain and generate profit by running charter schools, leading them to operate in ways that are sometimes at odds with the public interest. In The Business of Charter Schooling: Understanding the Policies that Charter Operators Use for Financial Benefit, they explore the differences between charters and traditional public schools, and they illustrate how charter school policies sometimes function to promote profiteering and privatization of public assets.

 

The authors explain, for example, how charter operators working through third-party corporations can use taxpayer dollars to purchase buildings and land. The seller in these purchases is sometimes the public school district itself. That is, taxpayer dollars are used to purchase property from the public, and the property ends up being owned by the private corporation that operates or is affiliated with the charter school.

 

“This particular type of transaction is usually legal and it can be very logical from the perspective of each of the parties involved,” said Baker. “But we should be troubled by the public policy that allows and even encourages this to happen.”

 

“In addition,” Miron explained, “less than arm’s-length leasing agreements and lucrative management fees are extracting resources that might otherwise be dedicated to direct services for children.”

 

The authors conclude with eight recommendations for policies to help ensure that charter schools pursue their publicly established goals and that protect the public interest.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization

“Social Impact Bonds” Included in ESSA

By dianeravitch
December 3, 2015 //
21

“Social Impact Bonds,” which are a bonanza for financial investors like Goldman Sachs, is included in the new ESSA that passed the House yesterday. All efforts to strip it out must concentrate on your senators.

 

The matter appears in Title I, Part D, Section 4108, page 485.

 

Title IV, A.

 

And in a section called “Safe and Healthy Students.”

 

Social Impact Bonds are defined on page 797 as “Pay for Success.” Investors are paid off when a student is not referred to special education.

 

This business of profiteering in public education can only be stopped by electing people to office who will fight it.

Categories Education Reform, For-Profit

Save Special Education, Not Profiteers!

By dianeravitch
December 3, 2015 //
10

From Beverley Holden Johns:

CALL D.C. ON PAY FOR SUCCESS
NOW IN S. 1177, the new No Child Left Behind law (ESEA):

You may be able to leave a message at any time, but to talk to
a live person just stay on the phone ignoring any prompts.

PLEASE SAY: S. 1177 will harm
special education. In Utah, Pay for Success (which is authorized
in the bill), funded by Goldman Sachs, resulted in over 99 percent
of children NOT being identified for special education.
(New York Times article of November 3, 2015: “Success Metrics
Questioned in School Program Funded by Goldman”).

PLEASE BE POLITE, BUT VERY FIRM AND INSISTENT –
YOU ARE TRYING TO DO A MOST DIFFICULT THING.

Call your U.S. Representative at their Washington, D.C. office.

Call House Speaker Paul Ryan at 202-225-0600

Call Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi at 202-225-0100

Call House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy at 202-225-4000

(each of above telephone numbers are for their leadership
office within the U.S. Capitol Building)

Call the top Democrat for S. 1177, Rep. Bobby Scott at 202-225-8351
(his office opens at 7:30 AM CST)

THE CONFERENCE COMMITTEE REPORT ON S. 1177:

The House amendment, but not the Senate bill, includes a definition for
‘‘Pay For Success Initiatives’’.
Amendment to strike the definition and insert the following:

PAY FOR SUCCESS INITIATIVE.
—The term ‘‘pay for success initiative’’ means a performance-based grant, contract, or cooperative agreement awarded by a public entity in which a commitment is made to pay for improved outcomes that result in social benefit and direct cost savings or cost avoidance to the public sector.
Such an initiative must include—

(1) a feasibility study on the initiative describing how the proposed intervention is based on evidence of effectiveness;

(2) a rigorous, third party evaluation that uses experimental or quasi-experimental design or other research methodologies that allow for the strongest possible causal inferences to determine whether the initiative has met its proposed outcomes;

(3) an annual, publicly available report on the progress of the initiative; and

(4) except as provided as under paragraph (2), a requirement that payments are made to the recipient of a grant contactor or cooperative agreement only when agreed upon outcomes are achieved.

Unfortunately NOTHING in this definition would have stopped
what is happening in Utah and in Chicago.

As we just passed its 40th birthday, special education
faces perhaps its greatest threat since the Education
of the Handicapped Act (EHA), now the Individuals with
Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), was signed into law.

The new No Child Left Behind bill, S. 1177, as reported
by the Conference Committee between the U.S. Senate
and the U.S. House includes the permissive use of Federal
funds by States AND by local school districts FOR
Pay for Success.

Funded by Goldman Sachs, Pay for Success in Utah
denied special education to over 99 percent of the
students that were in the early childhood Pay for Success
program.

Goldman Sachs has received a first payment of over
$250,000 based on over 99 percent of students NOT
being identified for special education.

Based on these results, Goldman Sachs may receive
an over 100 percent return on its investment as it
will receive yearly payments based on students
continuing to NOT be identified for special education
(multiple yearly payments for one student).

If special education is reduced to less than 1 percent
of students, for all practical purposes it will cease to
exist.

Goldman Sachs has also funded a Pay for Success
program for the Chicago Public Schools based on
paying Goldman $9,100 for each student, each year, NOT
identified for special education, but results for Chicago
from that program are not yet available.

Success is not the elimination of special education.
Success is not failing to identify students as needing
the specialized and individualized instruction required
by IDEA.

We simply cannot expect the general education teacher
to do it all, to know it all, and to achieve academic
excellence for each and every student.

Pretending we can eliminate disability, pretending
that almost every student with a disability and their
parents will benefit WITHOUT the legal rights of IDEA
which are only granted when a student is identified
for special education, is to turn us back over 40 years
to the time before we had State laws and then the
Federal law requiring special education for each and
every student with a disability.

Categories Education Industry, For-Profit, Special Education

Warning! ESSA Threatens Special Education

By dianeravitch
December 2, 2015 //
23

Beverley Holden Johns is a nationally recognized expert on special education. She is alarmed that the new “Every Student Succeeds Act” permits states to engage in “pay for success” plans, where investors earn money by not referring students for the services they need. Get on the phone to your Senators and Congressmen at once to stop this money-making scheme.

 

Johns writes:

 

 

As we just passed its 40th birthday, special education faces perhaps its greatest threat since the Education of the Handicapped Act (EHA), now the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), was signed into law.

 

The new No Child Left Behind bill, S. 1177, as reported by the Conference Committee between the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House includes the permissive use of Federal funds by States and by local school districts of Pay for Success.

 

Title I, Part D
‘‘(A) may include—
‘‘(i) the acquisition of equipment;
‘‘(ii) pay-for-success initiatives;”

 

Funded by Goldman Sachs, Pay for Success in Utah
denied special education to over 99 percent of the
students that were in the early childhood Pay for Success program.

 

Goldman Sachs has received a first payment of over
$250,000 based on over 99 percent of students NOT being identified for special education.

 

Based on these results, Goldman Sachs may receive
an over 100 percent return on its investment as it
will receive yearly payments based on students
continuing to NOT be identified for special education (multiple yearly payments for one student).

 

“If special education is reduced to less than 1 percent of students, for all practical purposes it will cease to exist,” says Bev Johns, Chair of the Illinois Special Education Coalition.

 

Goldman Sachs has also funded a Pay for Success
program for the Chicago Public Schools based on
paying Goldman on the number of students NOT
identified for special education, but results for Chicago from that program are not yet available.

 

“Success is not the elimination of special education.
Success is not failing to identify students as needing
the specialized and individualized instruction required by IDEA,” states Johns.

 

“We simply cannot expect the general education teacher to do it all, to know it all, and to achieve academic excellence for each and every student,” says Johns.

 

“Pretending we can eliminate disability, pretending
that almost every student with a disability and their
parents will benefit WITHOUT the legal rights of IDEA which are only granted when a student is identified for special education, is to turn us back over 40 years to the time before we had State laws and then the Federal law requiring special education for each and every student with a disability,” states Johns.

 

It is possible that Pay for Success is also in other
parts of the 1,059 page S. 1177.

 

The section quoted above is in SEC. 1020 of S. 1177,
PREVENTION AND INTERVENTION PROGRAMS
FOR CHILDREN AND YOUTH WHO ARE
NEGLECTED, DELINQUENT, AT-RISK
which amends Part D of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), Section 1415.

 

For more information: 217-473-1790

Categories Education Industry, For-Profit, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Special Education

Is It Legal for the Department of Education to Endorse Products?

By dianeravitch
November 29, 2015 //
37

When I worked in the U.S. Department of Education in the early 1990s, there was a strict code of ethics. The Inspector General’s office scrutinized every employee and transaction for any hint of personal or commercial gain. But now the Department itself is hawking products.

Reader Chiara sent this comment:

“Here’s the US Department of Education selling a product called “Edgenuity”. This reads like an actual advertisement. I wonder if the company helped draft the ad:

“Village Green uses an online curriculum, called “Edgenuity,“ which allows students to move through assignments at their own pace. Every student has a workstation where they log into their own personal Edgenuity portal and choose what to work on. Students take frequent tests and quizzes, and complete practice assignments. A data dashboard displays skills they’ve already mastered in green, those they are on track to master in blue and those they are struggling with in red.

“The main things the teachers are freed from at Village Green are quiz and test construction, grading, and designing core lessons. “However, they still have to plan the workshop and plan to re-teach Edgenuity in case a lesson is not grasped,” explained Pilkington.”

“Is it ethical (or even legal) for Obama’s ed dept to be selling tech product to public schools? Aren’t there rules or regs about this sort of thing? Where is the line between the public sector and the private sector?”

http://sites.ed.gov/progress/2015/11/rhode-island-school-makes-learning-personal-for-students/

Categories Accountability, For-Profit, U.S. Department of Education
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