Archives for category: Fraud
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Another Day, Another Charter Scandal: This One in Ohio

By dianeravitch
August 2, 2017 //
10

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, has been tweeting daily with the subject line: Another Day, Another Charter Scandal.

Here is today’s scandal.

Patrick O’Donnell writes in the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Cambridge Education Group, the operator of 19 Ohio charter schools and of a new school about to open in Cleveland’s West Park neighborhood, is distancing itself from recent fraud and racketeering charges in Florida against founder Marcus May.

But details are trickling out about how much that alleged fraud may have spread from Florida to the 19 schools Cambridge operates here in Ohio.

And Cambridge and its counterpart in Florida, Newpoint Education Partners – a company that is itself under indictment in that state – have had a tight relationship for several years, beyond just being founded by May.

The school logos in both Ohio and Florida for Cambridge and Newpoint have the same theme, featuring a dark blue circle. Executives have talked openly about the connection. And the two companies have shared some of the same officers at times, including Cambridge owner and President John Stack.

Stack has not been charged in the case. His name does not appear in court filings against May. He was vice president of operations of Newpoint when prosecutors say some of the fraud occurred. And he was “executive director” of Cambridge while prosecutors say money was diverted from schools here in Ohio to businesses May had an interest in.

Keep reading….You can’t tell the players without a scorecard.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Florida, Fraud, Ohio, Privatization

Ohio: Close Down This Phony “School”!

By dianeravitch
August 1, 2017 //
19

What would you say about a school that had the lowest graduation rate in the nation? What would you say about a school whose owner made millions of dollars from taxpayers while making regular contributions to state legislators and other elected officials? What should happen if that same school was audited by the state and found to have inflated the number of students? What should happen if the auditor determined that the school overcharged the state by $60 million and refuses to repay it? What if the school goes to court to fight the repayment and loses, using taxpayer dollars to advertise its cause?

The Columbus Dispatch reported here on the origins of this lucrative scam.

What should be the consequences for this massive ripoff of students and the public?

The state is allowing it to remain open, continue recruiting students, and pay off its debt a little at a time.

Why is this school still allowed to operate?

If it were a public school, it would have been closed long ago for its poor performance and its defrauding of the taxpayers.

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

SUNY and the Battle Over Teacher Certification

By dianeravitch
July 28, 2017 //
14

The SUNY charter institute oversees 167 charter schools, which it authorized. It doesn’t believe that charter teachers need a traditional certification, the one that other schools in New state must get.

As it happens, SUNY campuses offered teacher education preparing future teachers for their chosen profession and for certification.

The SUNY charter committee is sending a message to its teacher educators that their classes are a waste of time.

Is it wrong to create a shortcut for charter teachers? Shouldn’t all teachers be well prepared? Doesn’t every child deserve a well prepared teacher? If you agree, send an email.

Categories Charter Schools, Fraud, Teacher Education

Arthur Goldstein’s Twitter War Against Smears and Stupidity

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2017 //
31

Arthur Goldstein, veteran teacher of ESL at Francis Lewis High School in New York City, is one of the best teacher bloggers in the city, state, and nation.

He writes here about his disappointment with Neil deGrasse Tyson, after reading his tweet smearing the nation’s public schools. Arthur points out that Tyson is singing Betsy DeVos’s song and playing into the hands of the Flat zearthers he denounces.

Did Tyson notice?

Maybe he will google his name, see this, and respond to Arthur. Someone who is a scientist should be more careful about making blanket statements without checking the evidence.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Fraud

Florida: The Corruption and Conflicts of Interest Behind the Charter Industry

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2017 //
15

In some states, like Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania, charter operators get what they want by making campaign contributions to state legislators and the governor.

Florida is different. The charter operators and members of their families are members of the legislature. They shamelessly engage in self-dealing. You may well wonder: How can this be legal? I don’t know.

This article in the Miami Herald by Fabiola Santiago describes the flagrant abuse of power that typifies charter legislation.

He writes:

“Florida’s broad ethics laws are a joke.

“If they weren’t, they would protect Floridians from legislators who profit from the charter-school industry in private life and have been actively involved in pushing — and successfully passing — legislation to fund for-profit private schools at the expense of public education.

“Some lawmakers earn a paycheck tied to charter schools.

“One of them is Rep. Manny Diaz, the Hialeah Republican who collects a six-figure salary as chief operating officer of the charter Doral College and sits on the Education Committee and the K-12 Appropriations Subcommittee.

“Some lawmakers have close relatives who are founders of charter schools.

“One of them is the powerful House Speaker, Richard Corcoran, the Land O’Lakes Republican whose wife founded a charter school in Pasco County that stands to benefit from legislation. He was in Miami Wednesday preaching the gospel of charter schools as “building beautiful minds.”

“Other lawmakers are founders themselves or have ties to foundations or business entities connected to charter schools.

“One of them is Rep. Michael Bileca, the Miami Republican who chairs the House Education Committee and is listed as executive director of the foundation that funds True North Classical Academy, attended by the children of another legislator. Bileca is also a school founder.

“These three legislators were chief architects in the passage of a $419 million education bill that takes away millions of dollars from public schools to expand the charter-school industry in Florida at taxpayer expense.

“They crafted the most important parts of education bill HB 7069 in secret, acting in possible violation of the open government laws the Legislature is perennially seeking to weaken. There was no debate allowed and educators all across the state were left without a voice in the process.

“It’s no wonder it all went down in the dark. It’s a clear conflict of interest for members of the Florida Legislature who have a stake in charter schools to vote to fund and expand them. Their votes weaken the competition: public schools.

“This issue has nothing to do with being pro or against school choice. It’s about the abuse of power and possible violations of Florida statutes.

“The bill funds, to the tune of $140 million, an expansion of for-profit charter schools in the neighborhoods of D and F public schools, handing over to the private sector not only public money but allowing and encouraging charter schools to take the best students. In other words, instead of pouring those public resources into struggling public schools, the Legislature is turning publicly funded education into two school systems. In the struggling but also vibrant public system where choice already exists through magnets, there’s oversight and regulations that ensure standards. The charter system — which since its inception has demonstrated quite a range, including well-documented flops — is a free-for-all. Private corporations operating the schools make the rules.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/fabiola-santiago/article151418277.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Fraud, Funding

Education in Florida–Betsy DeVos’s Model for the Nation–is in Chaos

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2017 //
11

Valerie Strauss summarizes here the mess created in Florida by former Governor Jeb Bush’s harsh accountability policies and the legislation passed recently to enrich the charter industry at the expense of public schools across the state.

She begins:

“The K-12 education system in Florida — the one that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos likes to praise as a model for the nation — is in chaos.

“Traditional public school districts are trying to absorb the loss of millions of dollars for the new school year that starts within weeks. That money, which comes from local property taxes, is used for capital funding but now must be shared with charter schools as a result of a widely criticized $419 million K-12 public education bill crafted by Republican legislative leaders in secret and recently signed into law by Gov. Rick Scott — at a Catholic school.

“Critics, including some Republicans, say the law will harm traditional public schools, threaten services for students who live in poverty and curb local control of education while promoting charter schools and a state-funded voucher program.

“The law creates a “Schools of Hope” system that will turn failing traditional public schools into charter schools that are privately run but publicly funded. The law also sets out the requirement for districts to share capital funding.

“The man behind the Schools of Hope initiative was Republican House Speaker of Florida Richard Corcoran, whose wife founded a charter school in Pasco County. But as this recent Miami Herald opinion piece notes, a number of Republican lawmakers in the state legislature have financial stakes in the charter industry. “Florida’s broad ethics laws are a joke,” wrote Herald columnist Fabiola Santiago.”

School districts are planning to sue to stop the implantation of the charter industry’s raid on public school budgets.

When you read about this mess, bear in mind that this is what DeVos wants to inflict on the nation.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Fraud

Florida: Palm Beach Post Urges School Board to Join the Lawsuit Against Horrendous HB 7069

By dianeravitch
July 20, 2017 //
6

Florida parents and educators opposed HB 7069, a bill which hurts public schools and enriches charter schools (private contractor schools), but the legislature didn’t listen. (Key legislators have financial ties to the charter industry.) They urged Governor Rick Scott to veto it but he didn’t listen.

Now school boards, led by the one in Broward County, are suing to block the law and have it declared unconstitutional.

The Palm Beach Post urges the Palm Beach school board to join the suit. Perhaps the courts will listen.

“Kudos then to the Broward County School Board for being the first to get this legal action started. It has outlined five grounds to challenge the law. Among them, aspects friendly to charter schools such as making it easier for a charter — or “School of Hope” — to open near an academically struggling traditional public school.

“Perhaps the most salient argument, however, will be that the omnibus legislation violates the Florida Constitution’s requirement that each bill deal with a single subject. To help guarantee passage, the law — championed by House Speaker Richard Corcoran — mashed together bills that dealt with, among other things, eliminating a state math exam, requiring most public elementary schools to offer daily recess, and providing more money for teacher bonuses and a school-voucher program for students with disabilities.

“If that doesn’t raise questions about the single-subject rules, how about this: The constitution also requires that a bill’s “one subject” be “briefly expressed in the title.” The title for HB 7069 is more than 4,000 words.

“Corcoran’s office says the law — which essentially rewrites the state’s public school system — falls under the “single subject” of “K-12 education policy.”

“The Speaker called the Broward lawsuit “another example of the educational bureaucracy putting the adults who administer the schools ahead of the children who attend the schools.”

“Not only is it clueless,” he added, “it is also arguably heartless, to sue to stop school children from getting recess, disabled children from getting funding, poor children from getting out of failure factories and teachers from getting more pay.”

“No, Mr. Speaker. What’s “clueless” and “arguably heartless” is holding things such as teacher pay, help for disabled students and recess for elementary school kids hostage in order to siphon more money from struggling traditional public schools to funnel to less accountable, for-profit charter school operators.

“There are many well-run charters in Palm Beach County; and our district is better for it. But there is no evidence that as a group they perform any better for our tax dollars. In fact, hundreds of charter schools have failed in the state of Florida, and dozens more are academically struggling.”

Why is it that Florida wants to divert funding from public schools to contractor schools? Follow the money.

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

Florida Editorial: Will the Fight to Save Public Education Spread?

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2017 //
2

Congratulations to the editorial board Of the the Sun-Sentinel in Broward County, Florida, which published a strong editorial lambasting the Legislature for passing HB 7069.

Several school districts are planning a lawsuit to stop the law from being implemented. The law will do massive harm to the state’s public schools while diverting millions to the charter industry. Several key legislators have financial interests in charter schools. The bill is a travesty.

The editorial board of the Sun-Sentinel wrote:

“Last week the Broward County School Board approved a lawsuit against House Bill 7069. Though legislators crammed more than 50 bills into HB 7069, the Legislature passed it with almost no debate. House leaders, including those with ties to charter schools, crafted HB 7069 in the last days of the session. Despite protests from superintendents and school boards, Gov. Rick Scott signed the legislation.

“A memo from Barbara Myrick, the board’s general counsel, lists five grounds for a case that the law violates the Florida Constitution:

*Legislation must cover one subject. HB 7069 changes 69 state statutes;

*The law restricts school district from carrying out their duty to oversee contracts with charter schools;

*The program that allocates $140 million to so-called “Schools of Hope” sets no standard for how charter schools could spend that money and thus illegally circumvents local school boards;

*The law seeks to create a second, private system of public education;

*Under current law, schools can share public money with charter schools for construction. Under HB 7069, districts would have to share it.

“Supporters of the law, which became House Speaker Richard Corcoran’s priority, stuck the controversial provisions into a must-pass budget bill because most couldn’t have passed on their own. Some of the potential damage already is clear. Depriving school districts of construction money could harm their credit rating.

“Given that prospect, the Broward County School Board acted correctly in approving $25,000 to recruit an outside law firm. Next week, the Palm Beach County School Board will decide whether to file a lawsuit. The Miami-Dade County School Board is scheduled to hold a workshop on the issue this month.

“Broward County Superintendent Robert Runcie told the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board that HB 7069 would create “a parallel school system that could be privately managed without the requisite accountability. It would be a shadow, private system that runs on public dollars.”

“Example: The new rule that school districts share money for construction. The source of that revenue is a property tax dedicated to capital projects. There’s oversight when school districts spend that money, but nothing in HB 7069 requires charter schools to spend the money on construction and/or maintenance. There’s no oversight.

“Runcie also notes that the district has shared capital projects money when appropriate. One goal of the district’s 2014 general obligation bond was to reduce the ratio of students to computers, which at the time was six to one. It is now two to one.

“The district gave some of the new computers to charter schools but kept track of the equipment. When the district has had to close some of those schools, the district was able to recover the computers, which are public property.

“Now consider the “Schools of Hope” program. Supposedly, the state would use that $140 million to attract charter school operators that would set up near low-performing traditional public schools and give those students a better alternative.

“Nothing in the law, however, requires charter companies to take just students from those schools. Nor is there language to ensure that new operators would produce better results. No school board approval is required. Again, there is no oversight of public money.

“Supporters of HB 7069 wondered why the teachers union joined superintendents and school boards in opposition, since the bill contained a provision for teacher bonuses. Easy. Teachers wanted raises, not more one-time bonuses that add nothing to their pensions. And the state would continue to base bonuses on teachers’ SAT or ACT scores from years ago, not current performance. There could be no changes to the bonus program until 2021.

“Legislative leaders claim to support local control. HB 7069, however, strips control of local tax revenue from school boards and seeks to undermine Florida’s system of free public schools. The law is terrible public policy done in secret. More important, for the purpose of the lawsuit, HB 7069 is illegal.

“The Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade school districts estimate that the property tax provision of HB 7069 could cost them a combined $500 million over 10 years. Add the potential cost of higher borrowing rates and the case for a lawsuit is obvious. With luck, every school board in Florida will fight to overturn HB 7069 and protect public education.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Fraud, Funding, Privatization

John Merrow Punches a Gaping Hole in the Great Big Hot Air Balloon of Corporate Reform in D.C.

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2017 //
29

In his retirement, John Merrow has turned into a tiger, pulling apart the frauds that are regularly reported by the mainstream media.

In this marvelous post, he punctures the great hot air balloon of “reform” in the District of Columbia under Michelle Rhee and Kaya Henderson.

It begins like this:

The current issue of The Washington Monthly contains an article by former journalist Thomas Toch, “Hot for Teachers,” the latest in continuing string of pieces designed to prove the “truth” of the school reform movement’s four Commandments: top-down management, high stakes testing, more money for teachers and principals whose students do well, and dismissal for those whose students do not.

Just as a hot air balloon needs regular burst of hot air to remain afloat, the DCPS ‘success story’ needs constant celebrations of its alleged success. Sadly, it has had no trouble finding agents willing to praise Michelle Rhee, Kaya Henderson, and their work. Absent good data, Toch, former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, philanthropist Catherine Bradley, Mike Petrilli of Fordham, Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute, and writers Richard Whitmire and Amanda Ripley have lavished praise upon DCPS, often twisting or distorting data and omitting damaging information in order to make their case.

In his article, Toch distorts or omits at least eight issues. The distinguished education analyst Mary Levy and I have written a rebuttal, which is scheduled to appear in the next issue of The Washington Monthly. In this blog post, I want to consider in detail just one of Toch’s distortions: widespread cheating by adults: He glibly dismisses DC’s cheating scandals in just two sentences: In March 2011, USA Today ran a front-page story headlined “When Standardized Test Scores Soared in D.C., Were the Gains Real?,” an examination of suspected Rhee-era cheating. The problem turned out to be concentrated in a few schools, and investigations found no evidence of widespread cheating.

There are two factual errors in his second sentence. Cheating–erasing wrong answers and replacing them with correct ones–occurred in more than half of DCPS schools, and every ‘investigation’ was either controlled by Rhee and later Henderson or conducted by inept investigators–and sometimes both. All five investigations were whitewashes, because no one in power wanted to unmask the wrongdoing that had produced the remarkable test score gains.

Four essential background points: The rookie Chancellor met one-on-one with all her principals and, in those meetings, made them guarantee test score increases. We filmed a number of these sessions, and saw firsthand how Rhee relentlessly negotiated the numbers up, while also making it clear that failing to ‘make the numbers’ would have consequences.

Point number two: The test in question, the DC-CAS, had no consequences for students, none whatsoever. Therefore, many kids were inclined to blow it off, which in turn forced teachers and principals to go to weird extremes to try to get students to take the test seriously. One principal told his students that he would get a tattoo of their choice if they did well on the DC-CAS (They could choose the design; he would choose the location!).

Point number three: For reasons of bureaucratic efficiency, the DC-CAS exams were delivered to schools at least a week before the exam date and put in the hands of the principals whose jobs depended on raising scores on a test the kids didn’t care about. This was a temptation that some school leaders and some teachers found irresistible. Test books were opened, sample questions were distributed, and, after the exams, answers were changed. Some schools had ‘erasure parties,’ we were reliably told.

Point number four: Predictably, test scores went up, and the victory parties began.

Contrary to Toch’s assertions, the ‘wrong-to-right’ erasures in half of DCPS schools were never thoroughly investigated beyond the initial analysis done by the agency that corrected the exams in the first place, CTB/McGraw-Hill. Deep erasure analysis would have revealed any patterns of erasures, but it was never ordered by Chancellor Rhee, Deputy Chancellor Henderson, or the Mayor, presuming he was aware of the issue.

Merrow followed Rhee closely for years. No journalist knows her methods better than he. It took a long time for him to figure out that the balloon was full of hot air, but figure it out he did.

Categories Cheating, Corporate Reform, District of Columbia, Fraud, Rhee, Michelle

Jersey Jazzman: Do Charter Teachers Need to be Certified or Pass State Exams?

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2017 //
11

Jersey Jazzman explores the flap in New York about certification–or lack thereof–for charter school teachers.

The charter industry says, if we get the test scores, we don’t need teachers with masters’ degrees or certification…

JJ says:

Yes, “better results” are all that matters, no matter how practically small they may be. And no matter how you got them: if your gains are from student attrition, or narrowing the curriculum, or onerous disciplinary policies that drive out students, or resource advantages, that’s just fine with SUNY (State University of New York). You should be able to bypass the teacher certification rules the loser NYC district schools have to follow, so long as those test scores stay high…

We’ve been through this over on my side of the Hudson. The charters, usually affiliated with larger networks, believe that their “successes” entitle them to train their own staffs outside of standard regulation by the state. The theory seems to be that traditional university-based teacher training programs are too… well, traditional.

…they shouldn’t have to subject their teachers to all that boring research and theory and intellectual inquisitiveness and whatnot. Just bring these prospective teachers into the charters, let them soak up the awesomeness, and then put them into schools…

Oh, sorry: charter schools. The data is thin, but that’s what appears to be happening with the Relay “Graduate” “School” of “Education,” the premier charter teacher training center in the Northeast. Despite some unsourced claims from Relay’s leadership, and some professional development contracts with districts like Newark and Camden and Philadelphia, it’s clear that Relay has become more a staffing firm for a particular group of charter chains than a broad provider of teacher training.

Relay is a phony “graduate” school. There is no faculty. No library. No research. Just charter teachers teaching other charter teachers. How to be awesome.

As Bruce Baker and Gary Miron have pointed out, this leads to a “company store” style of professional development, where charter teachers essentially pay back a part of their wages to their employers (or their employers’ partners) in exchange for the right to continuing working at their jobs — usually for lower wages than their public district school counterparts.

As many have noted, Relay is steeped in the “no excuses” style of pedagogy, exemplified by Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion. I contend it’s a type of teaching that would never, ever be accepted out in the leafy ‘burbs; one that makes the teacher the focus of the classroom instead of the student. This is yet another instance of the charter industry selling its schools as an antidote to race and class inequality, even as it imposes a different kind of schooling on urban students of color than the schooling found in affluent, majority-white suburban schools.

Relay has been at it for a few years now, but I’ve yet to see any empirical evidence that they’re doing any better than the university-based teacher training programs. Relay is placing most of its teachers into a separate group of schools, and most (if not all) of the teachers in those schools are being trained by Relay. Both Relay and its client charter schools make what Angus Shiva Mungal calls a “parallel education structure.” We’re not likely to see many Relay grads move into jobs currently held by traditionally trained teachers, which is what we would need to properly compare the two training paths.

Still, Relay has had to at least adhere to the form of university-based teacher training. Their “professors” may be inexperienced and utterly lacking in scholarly qualifications, but their graduates do get an actual teaching certification, based on a “graduate” “school” teacher training program. The SUNY proposal, however, does away with even the pretense of college-level training.

TFA and Relay will destroy the teaching profession if they can manage it.

They are a destructive force in education.

Speak out against this retrograde policy.

Categories Charter Schools, Fraud, Teacher Education
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