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Greg Windle: How Reformers in Philadelphia Rig Bids to Take Care of Their Own

By dianeravitch
July 2, 2018 //
13

Greg Windle, writing for The Notebook in Philadelphia, writes here about polite corruption in bidding for public contracts on the Philadelphia School System, which is run by a Broadie, William Hite.

“In a dispute over a lucrative contract for principal coaching, a bidder [Joseph Merlino] has accused the District of ignoring its procurement procedures, as well as state and local bidding requirements.

“The company has filed a complaint in the Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas demanding the District and school board agree to follow their own contracting procedure in the future to avoid undermining public confidence in the integrity of the process…the District is preparing to argue that it has no obligation to follow state law or enter into competitive bidding when it awards contracts for professional services, despite promising to do so in its procedures sent to bidders.”

The contract was for training principals. The bidder who lost co,planned that his organization had a more experienced team and a lower bid than the bidder who won, which was The New Teacher Project. The decision was made by someone with informal ties to The New Teacher Project.

“Underlying this dispute is a concern over long-term outsourcing of this type of work, as well as a clash of philosophies over the best way to train teachers and principals in leadership. This clash pits those favoring more traditional means against others promoting a more “disruptive” approach that has been advocated by major national education players, including the Gates and Walton foundations, and the groups they fund, such as the New Teacher Project, which was awarded the contract….

“In a complaint sent to the District as a prelude to his court action, Merlino noted that the District’s deputy in the department that selected the New Teacher Project, out of nine who submitted bids, was on a two-year fellowship with School Systems Leaders, part of an informal network of organizations that grew out of Teach for America and includes the New Teacher Project. School Systems Leaders seeks to place Teach for America alumni in high-level administrative positions within public school districts….

“In his complaint, Merlino noted that the contract was awarded when Katie Schlesinger was a deputy in the office of Leadership Development & Evaluation, which managed the bidding process. At the time, she also had a fellowship through School Systems Leaders.

“School Systems Leaders and the New Teachers Project are both spinoffs of TFA, and both function by staffing rank-and-file positions with TFA corps members or alumni. And they both receive funding from the same venture capitalist firm – the NewSchools Venture Fund.”

One hand scratches the other.

This deal stinks.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Corruption, Disruption, Education Reform, Fraud, Philadelphia

Why Arizona Voters Should Vote NO on Voucher Expansion

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2018 //
1

After a long and bruising battle, voters in Arizona will have their first chance to vote on vouchers in November. Arizona has vouchers now for specific groups of students, but last year the legislature enacted an e passion that would make vouchers available to all. Arizona is beloved by ALEC, the Koch brothers, and the DeVos family due to its choice programs. After passage of voucher expansion, supporters of public schools gathered over 100,000 signatures calling for a referendum. The Koch brothers sent in lawyers to try to block the referendum (Prop 305), but the state courts ruled that it could go forward. Then the Koch operatives pushed the idea that the legislature should repeal and re-enact the voucher expansion law, which would force the opposition to start over. But, in the days after the mass protests of the #RedForEd movement, the legislature was unable to gather enough votes for repeal.

Why are the Koch brothers and Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Childre so frightened of a referendum? Vouchers have lost every time they have been put to a vote.

How do vouchers work in Arizona?

This article, published a year ago, says that oversight of public money is nearly a sham.

“As the program expanded, resources to scrutinize the expenditures — made using state-provided debit cards — never kept pace. The Legislature gave the Department of Education money for the program butwouldn’t authorize spending much of it.

“The warnings of lax oversight and little accountability proved prescient. Money was misspent but the state recovered almost none of it.

“For example, some parents transferred all of their scholarship money into a 529 college-savings account and then left the program — preventing the state from recouping the funds.

“Others pocketed the money and sent their kids to public schools.

“Some purchased books or other materials using their state-issued debit cards and then immediately returned them. The refunded money was put on gift cards, allowing parents to spend it with no scrutiny.

“And despite the Legislature’s vehement opposition to public money paying for abortions, the ESA program became one of the only state programs to allegedly fund the procedure. In 2014, payment to a health clinic led education officials to believe ESA money had been spent on an abortion.

“These illegal expenditures of taxpayer money have sparked little outrage and no widespread calls for changes from either the Governor’s Office or the Legislature.

“State leaders’ apathy is in stark contrast to their condemnation of and crackdown on abuse of social-welfare programs. Arizona has in recent years implemented among the nation’s most restrictive rules for lower-income recipients of cash assistance.

“Chris Kotterman, lobbyist for the Arizona School Boards Association, said that “double standard” reflects the special status Republican state leaders afford school-choice programs.

““Private-school choice is much more favored than cash assistance to the poor,” Kotterman said. “If it’s a welfare program, then strict accountability is necessary … On the school-choice side, there’s an inherent assumption that parents, no matter what, are able to make the best choices and the government should get out of the way.”

Categories ALEC, Arizona, Betsy DeVos, Education Reform, Fraud, Koch Brothers

North Carolina: Another Embezzlement Scandal at a Religious Voucher School

By dianeravitch
June 28, 2018 //
3

North Carolina gives out public money to private and religious schools with little or no oversight. Do not be surprised that some people take advantage of the open cash register and help themselves to taxpayers’ money that should have done to public schools.

This is what Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos hopes to see in every state.

In the latest case of embezzlement, the former headmaster of a Christian school was indicted on multiple counts of stealing $134,000 of public money.

“The former headmaster at Rutherfordton’s Trinity Christian School, Tiffany Walker, was indicted by a grand jury earlier this month on 137 counts of embezzlement and obtaining property by false pretenses while serving in her official capacity at the school…”

“According to press accounts, between July 2016 and December 2017 Walker wrote herself checks from the school’s bank account on a regular basis, totaling nearly $35,000. She also used school credit cards to make more than $100,000 in personal purchases.

“Trinity Christian is a private school in western North Carolina that has participated in the state’s publicly funded Opportunity Scholarship Program since its inception. Between 2014 and 2018, the school has taken in $327,178 worth of scholarships, also known as school vouchers, that low-income families have received from the state to use toward private school tuition.

“The school voucher program is promoted by advocates as a pathway toward improved academic achievement for poor students who are not succeeding in their local public schools. Vouchers enable some of these students to access private educational options; however, throughout its existence the program has faced criticism not only for lawmakers’ failure to ensure participating private schools employ high academic standards, but also the fact that there is little in the way of robust financial oversight for the millions of public dollars that are being funneled to privately managed schools.

“Because Trinity Christian does not receive at least $300,000 on an annual basis in voucher funds, the school is not legally obligated to file a financial review with the state agency tasked with overseeing the Opportunity Scholarship Program. The headmaster’s fraudulent activity was only discovered when the school was undergoing an optional reaccreditation review process and began gathering documentation for a financial audit, according to Trinity Christian’s board chairman, Grant Deviney…

“If the name Trinity Christian School rings a bell, that’s because it’s also the name of the state’s largest voucher school located in Fayetteville – and that school, too, has been in the news over the past year and a half.

“In a Wake County courthouse last summer, Trinity Christian’s (Fayetteville) athletic director and high school teacher Heath Vandevender pleaded guilty to embezzling nearly $400,000 in employee state tax withholdings over an eight year period while serving as payroll manager for the school.
Vandevender entered into a plea deal struck with the state that allowed him to serve three months in prison, pay a $45,000 fine and be placed under supervised probation for five years. He was also required to serve 100 hours of community service. Vandevender has already repaid the nearly $400,000 owed to the state that he embezzled.

“Following his plea deal, Vandevender continued to work and coach at Trinity Christian (which is run by his father, Dennis) while serving his jail sentence on the weekends as part of a work release option. The school is home to one of the state’s top high school basketball programs and has produced high profile players like Joey Baker, who recently decided to graduate early to join the Duke Blue Devils, and Dennis Smith Jr., who spent just one year playing for NC State University before joining the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks.

“Trinity Christian (Fayetteville) has received more than $2 million in school voucher funds since 2014 and continues to be the state’s top recipient of publicly-funded vouchers despite the revelation that public funds were embezzled by a school employee over nearly a decade. The flow of taxpayer dollars to the school has not stopped despite the fact that Vandevender, now a convicted felon who was responsible for the embezzlement, continues to teach and coach at the school. It’s not clear if he continues to manage payroll operations as well.

“Remarkably, Vandevender’s fraudulent activity was not uncovered by way of oversight mechanisms required by the Opportunity Scholarship Program. As the state determined Trinity Christian to be eligible to participate in the program in 2014 and then began sending millions of public dollars to the school through scholarships awarded to low-income families, Vandevender was nearing the end of an eight year period of embezzling hundreds of thousands of employee payroll tax dollars, which only came to light thanks to an investigation by the state’s Department of Revenue.

***

“North Carolina places few requirements on private voucher schools to account for how the taxpayer dollars they receive are used to educate students.

“While private voucher schools receiving more than $300,000 annually in taxpayer dollars must undergo a financial review that is then submitted to the state, that requirement only captures a very small percentage of the schools that currently receive public dollars. Last year only ten voucher schools out of more than 400 were subject to that requirement. And a financial review is not nearly as robust or revealing as a financial audit, which means fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars could still continue under the radar.

“This indicates that the overwhelming majority of private voucher schools are free to spend public funds as they choose, out of the public eye.”

Really, who cares how they spend the money? Who cares if it’s stolen or pays for the personal expenses of the headmaster or the coach?

If legislators don’t care and taxpayers don’t care, just keep shoveling the money out the door and forget about it.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Education Reform, Fraud, North Carolina, Vouchers

D.C.: The Lies That Charter Advocates Tell

By dianeravitch
June 25, 2018 //
18

This spring, the D.C. public schools—under tight corporate reform control since 2007–were rocked by a scandal about graduation rates. It started when Ballou High School boasted about its 100% graduation rate, a story that was then celebrated by the local NPR station. After teachers blew the whistle, NPR returned to investigate and discovered that many of the graduates did not qualify for a high school diploma due to their long absences and lack of credits. This prompted a systemwide audit, which determined that a large proportion of the district’s graduates were unqualified. The system was cheating to boost its apparent (but false) success.

Emily Langhorne of the Progressive Policy Institute wrote an article for the Washington Post to declare, proudly, that charter schools were not implicated in the graduation rate scandal. In fact, she asserted, the charter numbers are audited, and every graduate is really, truly a real high school graduate.

“What’s happened in DCPS is tragic — not only that the number of students graduating declined but also that DCPS has been graduating students who aren’t prepared for life beyond school.

“Yet there is a story of real academic progress in the nation’s capital. It’s the story of the other public schools, the ones educating nearly 50 percent of public school students. It’s the story of D.C.’s charter schools…

“In 2017, D.C.’s 21 charter high schools graduated 73.4 percent of their students in four years. Since the PCSB audits every graduating student’s transcript, that number is an accurate reflection of student achievement.”

Unfortunately, this happy account leaves out some very important but inconvenient facts.

I turned to two experts on the District of Columbia Public Schools.

One of them, Mark Simon of the Economic Policy I statute, told me there had never been an independent audit of the graduation rate# at DCPS charter schools. Langhorne refers to an audit by the PCSB, the Public Charter School Board of the District of Columbia. This is not an independent agency. The data were supplied by the individual charter schools. The Progressive Policy Institute advocates for charter schools. No genuinely independent audit was ever conducted of charter school graduates.

I then turned to Mary Levy, a civil rights attorney and fiscal watchdog of D.C. schools for many years.

She wrote me that the Langhorne article was “highly misleading.” First, she agreed with Simon that there had been no independent audit of the numbers, unlike the audit of the public schools’ data.

She added: “About a third of charter school students leave their schools–and the cohort–before the date of graduation. The majority of 9th grade charter students do not graduate from charter schools. [The emphasis is hers.]

Screen Shot 2018-06-22 at 3.00.32 PM

Levy added:

We don’t know where those who leave charter schools in the 9th grade go–some surely transfer to DCPS (District of Columbia Public Schools), enlarging that cohort, some move out of DC, some drop out. We also know that DCPS 9th grade enrollment includes a number of students in their second year of 9th grade, due to insufficient Carnegie units, thus inflating the percentage based on Grade 9 enrollment. The extent to which this happens in charter schools is unknown.”

To see all the data download the excel file here.

Categories Accountability, District of Columbia, Education Reform, Fraud, Graduation rates, Rhee, Michelle

Jan Resseger on Michelle Rhee’s Collapsing Legacy

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2018 //
8

It is one of the curiosities of our time that reformers point to D.C. as one of their triumphs, based on the gain of a few points in test scores on NAEP and rising graduation rates.

D.C. remains one of the lowest performing districts in the nation. And on those same NAEP tests that gladden the hearts of reformers, the D.C. schools have the biggest achievement gaps between blacks and whites and between Hispanics and whites of any urban district in the nation.

D.C. is not a model for the nation.

Reformers pointed to impressive graduation rates as evidence for the D.C. Miracle.

Now we know that the D.C. graduation rates were phony, and that about a third of graduates received diplomas despite absences and lacking credits.

Jan Resseger writes here about the collapsing legacy of Michelle Rhee.

Categories District of Columbia, Education Reform, Fraud, Graduation rates, Hoax, Rhee, Michelle

Pennsylvania: Home to Unregulated Cyber Charter Frauds

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2018 //
4

Pennsylvania has many cyber charters. They are all failing schools. The legislature doesn’t care. Two cyber charter operators were arrested and convicted for stealing millions of dollars. One of them–Nicholas Trombetta– is awaiting sentencing for tax evasion on the $8 million he stole from the cyber charter he founded (Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School), the other–June Brown, founder of two cyber charters–was convicted but not sent to jail because the judge accepted her plea that she was too old and frail to be incarcerated (she is younger than me). Trombetta committed a crime by evading taxes, but stealing $8 million from his cyber charter was not a crime under lax Pennsylvania law, according to the article cited here.

Greg Windle writes here about the failure of the Legislature to reign in cyber charter corruption, fraud, waste, and abuse of taxpayers’ dollars.

Even choice advocates are embarrassed by cyber charters, but they keep on going, collecting tax dollars for rotten services.

No cyber charter school in Pennsylvania have ever received a passing academic score from the state, and very few have come close, according to information recently highlighted in a report from the office of Democratic State Rep. James Roebuck of Philadelphia.

Roebuck and other House Democrats have assembled a package of bills that would further regulate charters by reforming how they use reserve funds, rules for leasing buildings, special education payments, contracting, the teacher evaluation system, disclosure in advertising, school building closures, and the transfer of school records. The package would not single out cybers, but other legislation has been introduced that would reduce their per-student reimbursement.

Pennsylvania has 13 cyber charters enrolling more than 34,000 students, or 10 percent of all the cyber students in the country.

These schools are authorized not by local districts, but by the Pennsylvania Department of Education. But districts must send per-pupil payments to cyber charters for each local student they enroll, and the payments are the same as for brick-and-mortar charters, even though cybers have fewer expenses.

This has proven frustrating not only to the districts and other proponents of traditional public schools, but to several groups that favor school choice and charters…

No cyber charter school in Pennsylvania have ever received a passing academic score from the state, and very few have come close, according to information recently highlighted in a report from the office of Democratic State Rep. James Roebuck of Philadelphia.

Roebuck and other House Democrats have assembled a package of bills that would further regulate charters by reforming how they use reserve funds, rules for leasing buildings, special education payments, contracting, the teacher evaluation system, disclosure in advertising, school building closures, and the transfer of school records. The package would not single out cybers, but other legislation has been introduced that would reduce their per-student reimbursement.

Pennsylvania has 13 cyber charters enrolling more than 34,000 students, or 10 percent of all the cyber students in the country.

These schools are authorized not by local districts, but by the Pennsylvania Department of Education. But districts must send per-pupil payments to cyber charters for each local student they enroll, and the payments are the same as for brick-and-mortar charters, even though cybers have fewer expenses.

This has proven frustrating not only to the districts and other proponents of traditional public schools, but to several groups that favor school choice and charters…

It’s been a difficult school year for many U.S. cybers. Ohio’s largest chain was forced to close mid-year, and others closed down in Georgia, Indiana, Nevada, and New Mexico. In the past, it has been rare for states to close cyber charters despite low achievement across the sector and several financial scandals…

Of the 43 states that allow charter schools, only 35 allow cyber charters. The eight that do not are Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Virginia. Only 23 of the states that allow cybers have actually authorized any, according to the report from the National Association of Charter School Authorizers. Those states plus Washington D.C. have a total of 135 full-time cyber charter schools.

Cybers make up just 2 percent of all charters in the country.

At its peak, Pennsylvania had 14 cyber charters, more than 10 percent of the nation’s total. However, Education Plus Cyber closed in December 2015 during the state budget crisis after its bank pulled the school’s line of credit. Some staff also alleged financial mismanagement…

Out of the 13 full-time cyber charters in Pennsylvania, educating over 34,000 students, only four have come close to receiving a passing grade of 70. The rest have received the lowest rating on the state’s academic rubric every year….

Larry Feinberg has his own frustrations with cyber charters and gw attributes them to a poorly written charter school law. Feinberg has been a school board member in Haverford Township for over 20 years, is on the board of the Pennsylvania School Board Association, and co-founded the Keystone State Education Coalition — a group that advocates for traditional public education, including stronger regulations on charters.

“Every month in school board meetings, I have to approve payments to cyber charters,” Feinberg said. “Our test scores are 30, 40, 50 points higher than theirs. We never authorized any of them. … They are all authorized by the Pennsylvania Department of Education. That allows them to reach in and take our tax dollars.

“There’s just no way it can cost as much money to educate them without a building and full-time staff. So there’s huge profits to be made.”

Categories Failure, For-Profit, Fraud, Pennsylvania, Virtual Charter Schools

Jan Resseger: Why Did DeVos Overrule Her Staff to Reinstate a Shoddy Accreditor?

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2018 //
7

Jan Resseger writes here about Betsy DeVos’s decision to overrule a strong recommendation from Department career staff and resinstate an accrediting agency with a terrible record.

Before the Obama Department of Education put the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS) out of business in 2016, ACICS had been instrumental in accrediting a number of unscrupulous, for-profit colleges whose fiscal survival depended on attracting students bringing dollars from federal loans. After ACICS was put out of business by the Obama Department of Education, ACICS filed a lawsuit claiming its record had not been fully examined. In March of this year, a federal judge ruled in favor of the accreditation agency—saying that the Department of Education still needs to consider 36,000 pages of information ACICS submitted that was never considered. On April 3, 2018, after the judge’s ruling, Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos conditionally reapproved ACICS pending further study.

Last Friday, however, DeVos’s department was forced to release an internal report drafted by career staff at the U.S. Department of Education, a report condemning ACICS and recommending that its status as an accreditor be terminated. In April, DeVos ignored this new staff report when she restored—conditionally— the agency’s status. The Chronicle of Higher Education‘s Eric Kelderman explains: “For the second time in less than two years, officials at the U.S. Department of Education have recommended against approving a controversial accrediting agency that primarily oversees for-profit colleges. But their finding may have little effect on the accreditor’s future. Friday evening, the department released a 244-page document advising that the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, known as ACICS, failed to meet nearly 60 federal regulations on accreditation. The analysis is a draft of a report that was meant to be released in May at a hearing scheduled to consider the accreditor’s status. That hearing was cancelled following a judge’s order in a lawsuit filed by the council.”

Advocates have pressured for the release of the Department’s internal draft report, while, of course, ACICS has been trying to block the report’s becoming public. The Wall Street Journal‘s Michelle Hackman explains: “The document was released Friday under the Freedom of Information Act after the Century Foundation… sued the Education Department for initially declining to make it public. ‘It’s no wonder that ACICS and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos didn’t want this report to come out,’ said Alex Elson, a former Obama-era Education Department official whose firm, the National Student Loan Legal Defense Fund, helped sue the department. ‘Clearly, she was well aware that ACICS was getting worse, not better.’ The career staff’s findings could put Mrs. DeVos in a tough position as she weighs whether to allow the accreditor to continue operating.”

Why would DeVos do this?

Does she like accrediting agencies that ignore fraud?

Apparently the answer is yes.

After all, she was an investor in for-profit colleges before she became secretary. Did she divest? Who knows?

Categories Betsy DeVos, For-Profit, Fraud, Higher Education

CTA to Friends of Public Schools: Support AB 276!

By dianeravitch
June 15, 2018 //
6

The California Teachers Association calls on all friends of public schools to support AB 276, which sets standards for accountability and transparency for charter schools across the state.

Charter Legislation to Stop Waste, Fraud and Abuse Up for Critical Vote

Please take a minute to contact your Senator %%Senator Full Name%% at %%Senator Phone%% and urge %%Her or Him%% to SUPPORT AB 276 by Assembly Member Jose Medina.

As responsible educators and Californians, we need to hold ALL public entities accountable for their use of taxpayer dollars, particularly when it comes to our schools.

The ongoing proliferation of charter schools is hurting students in our neighborhood public schools because of the lack of transparency and accountability, and the disparity in requirements under which charter schools operate.

The Senate Education Committee is set to vote on AB 276, which requires charter school governing boards to comply with laws promoting transparency and accountability to parents and the public in the operation of public schools and the expenditure of public funds; holding charter schools to the same requirements as traditional public schools. However, ALL senators need to hear from you since AB 276 might be up for a floor vote.

It just takes 60 seconds to contact your Senator! Those taking funds away from our neighborhood schools are also contacting lawmakers to pressure them to keep things the way they are, so it is imperative we reach out to our senators now and urge them to STOP this waste, fraud and abuse!

Contact Senator %%Senator Full Name%% at %%Senator Phone%% and urge %%Her or Him%% to SUPPORT AB 276 by Assembly Member Jose Medina.

Recent headlines are mind-boggling!
More than $149 million of waste, fraud and abuse of tax dollars has been documented in California’s charter school environment, hurting our students and communities.

Having private and secret meetings to discuss how tax dollars will be spent is not acceptable.
Too much is at risk when our students are counting on sound financial decisions that will ensure they get the quality public education they need and deserve.

The only ones benefiting from our public schools should be the students, and ultimately our community.
AB 276 prohibits charter school board members and their immediate families from financially benefiting from their schools. Public schools’ conflict of interest laws and disclosure regulations should also apply to charter schools that receive public funds.

Streamlined regulations for charter schools were never intended to grant operators total authority over taxpayer dollars without any accountability.

Show us the money!
We must require companies and organizations that manage charter schools to release to parents and the public how they spend taxpayer money, including their annual budgets and contracts. The public’s business should be transacted in public. Public agencies must take their actions openly and their deliberations must be conducted openly.

We deserve to know how our schools are being run, and our state deserves an education system that is free from unfair advantages and double standards. Companies and organizations that manage charter schools must open board meetings to parents and the public, similarly to public school board meetings.

Read more about AB 276:
Fact Sheet | Letter | Details

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Fraud, Funding, Privatization, Supporting public schools

LAUSD Will Not Renew Contract of Inspector General, Who Was Too Tough on Charters

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2018 //
5

Elections have consequences. In the last Los Angeles school board election, charteristas took control of the school board by one vote. Their fourth vote, however, is tenuous b3cause Ref Rodriguez is awaiting trial on felony charges of campaign finance violations.

The board voted not to renew the contract of the district’s inspector general. He led several investigations into charter school corruption.

The board said they were terminating him due to a “hostile work environment” in his office, although none of the complaints were about him.

The inspector general investigated the Billion-dollar iPad scandal.

The financial scandals at the Celerity charter chain.

Fraud at the PUC charter chain started by Ref Rodriguez.

But this can’t be the reason he is being ousted, right?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Fraud, Los Angeles

Tom Ultican: How NCLB and Charters Killed the Public Schools of Inglewood, California

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2018 //
14

This is the most important story you will read today. It is a warning about where School Choice is heading, what it will do to the democratic institution of the public schools, what it has already done to the schools of one district in California. If we don’t reverse the tide, more districts will be drowned by choice and debt.

Retired physics teacher Tom Ultican has been researching the Destroy Pubkic Education movement. This movement creates nothing positive. It tears down what once belonged to the community, paid for with their tax dollars.

The story of Inglewood, California, is a textbook case of the destruction of a small district, brought low by NCLB, then strangled and left for dead by a series of Broad-trained superintendents and the steady expansion of privately managed charter schools.

The story of Inglewood is an indictment of the so-called reform movement, which destroyed the public schools of that district.

Are Public Schools in Inglewood, California a Warning?

Ultican begins:

“In 2006, the relatively small Inglewood Unified School District (IUSD) had over 18,000 students and was a fiscally sound competent system. Today, IUSD has 8,400 students, is 30% privatized and drowning in debt. In 2012, the state of California took over the district, usurped the authority of the elected school board and installed a “State Trustee” to run it. IUSD is on its sixth state appointed trustee in six years.

“This crisis was created by politicians and wealthy elites. It did not just happen. Understanding the privatization of Inglewood’s schools through the choice agenda is instructive of the path that could lead to the end of public schools in California…

“NCLB set the table. Students in poor communities were guaranteed to produce bad test results. Billionaires were pouring huge money into developing the charter school industry. State leaders were putting privatization friendly leaders in charge of school districts. The state trustees were never in place long enough to provide stable leadership.

“Eli Broad attended public school and went on to become the only person ever to develop two Fortune 500 companies, Sun America and KB Homes. Broad, who is worth $6 billion, decided that public schools should be privatized and established a school for administrators to promote his ideology.

“In Oakland, the first state trustee was a Broad Academy graduate named Randy Ward and three more of the next 6 superintendents who followed Ward were also Broad trained. Oakland suffered nine superintendents in 13 years.

“In Inglewood, one trustee was a charter school founder who was concurrently serving as a board member of the charter school and the last two superintendents were Broad trained. Inglewood received six state appointed trustees in six years.

“How much longer before large school districts like San Diego and Los Angeles – with 25% or more of their students in privatized schools – are forced into bankruptcy and taken over by the state? Both districts are currently running massive deficits caused primarily by charter school privatization and unfair special education costs.”

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, California, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Privatization, Testing
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