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Jackie Goldberg: Why I Love This Woman!

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2019 //
11

 

Capital & Main interviewed Jackie Goldberg about her views, her vision, her hopes for the future. My heart sang and my brain hummed as I read her inspiring words.  

Reading Jackie’s words was like eating comfort food. I kept saying to myself, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

Read the interview and you will see what I mean.

Jackie knows we are in the middle of a war to save public education. She knows that there is big money determined to kill it. She knows that the hope for the future of our democracy depends in having a well-funded public school system that provides genuine opportunity to all children.

And she is prepared to go to the mat, in Los Angeles and in Sacramento, to get the funding that public schools need and to get the financial accountability that charter schools need.

I am reminded of the first time I met Jackie. It was December 6, 2018. I had heard about her for years as an iconic figure but our paths had never crossed.

Over the past several years, the billionaires were buying seats on the LAUSD and things were looking bleak. I kept hearing about this dynamo Jackie Goldberg, the only one who could turn things around. She was the Cy Young pitcher in the bullpen, the one held in reserve until the ninth inning.

Last December, I went to Los Angeles to receive an award from a progressive group called LAANE (Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy), which fights for fair wages for low-income workers, environmental protection, and a stronger public sector.

Jackie was there. We agreed to talk after the dinner. We sat in a crowded bar and talked for over an hour. I felt like I was talking to my mirror image yet our life experiences were very different. It was a joyous conversation.

When I returned to LA in February, I spoke at a fundraiser for her. Once again I was impressed by her knowledge, her experience, her passion for education and for children and for justice.

You could count me as her biggest fan but given the 72% win she just racked up, I’m guessing that there are many others in Los Angeles who have known her much longer and who love Jackie as much as I do.

It should go without saying that she is a hero of public education.

Cy Young just came in from the bullpen. Things are definitely looking up.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Reform, Equity, Funding, Honor Roll, Los Angeles, Love

Southern Education Foundation Reports on Budget Proposals

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2019 //
7

The Southern Education Foundation posted a very handy analysis of the education budgets of southern states. 

Florida’s budget is a big win for Jeb Bush and Betsy Devos. Governor Ron DeSantis has proposed a small increase in funding for K-12 public schools (about 5%), but the outlay for vouchers will grow by 50% from 2018-2020, and the outlay for charter facilities will triple in the same time period. Spending on colleges, universities, and Historically Black Colleges and Universities is flat.

In Louisiana, Governor John Bel Edwards has flat funded most everything, including vouchers, but has proposed $101 million to give every teacher a pay raise. He is one of only two Democratic governors in the south.

In all of the southern states, the vast majority of students attend public schools from K-12. In states with charters and vouchers, the vast majority of students will be shortchanged so that a small minority can attend charter schools and religious schools. Their “freedom” comes at the cost of equity for all.

Georgia’s Governor Brian Kemp has added nearly $500 million for teacher pay raises. There is also a curious $2.2 million for a “chief turnaround officer.” I wonder how the state will find that magician.

In Mississippi, Governor Phil Bryant has flat funded most everything, but added $25 million for teacher pay raises. I guess he is satisfied with the status quo.

In Alabama, Governor Kay Ivey proposes a 29% increase in funding for Pre-K, a 4% increase in teacher pay, a small increase for higher education and HBCUs, and a small increase (under 10%  for K-12) schools.

Tennessee’s Governor Bill Lee adds new money for charters and vouchers, since privatization is his highest priority. From 2018-2020, K-12 public schools get a small increase; vouchers are introduced with a new allocation of $25,450,000; $71 million is budgeted in 2020 for teacher pay raises; Pre-K is flat funded; higher education gets a small increase; and there is a new appropriation of $30 million for school safety.

In South Carolina, Governor McMaster flat funds K-12 public education and Pre-K; he adds $48.3 million for safety and school resource officers; and introduces $100 million for something I can’t interpret, a “Rural School District Economic Development Closing Fund.” He also includes a $12 million boost for the state’s virtual charter, despite a mountain of evidence that such schools are low-performing and often nothing more than scams.

In North Carolina, the other Southern Democratic governor is Roy Cooper. He proposes to flat fund charters and vouchers. He proposes $216 million for teacher pay raises and a fund of $10 million for retaining and recruiting teachers. Pre-K gets a big boost, and K-12 public schools get a small increase. He also adds new programs of $40 million for wraparound services and $15 million for school safety.

Remember, these are budget proposals and they must be approved by the Legislature in each state.

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization

North Carolina: Voucher Program is Unaccountable, Nontransparent

By dianeravitch
May 13, 2019 //
7

 

Stuart Egan writes that members of the General Assembly seek adjustments to the state’s voucher program to make it even less transparent and less accountable than at present. 

The General Assembly has committed to spend nearly $1 billion on this program by 2026-2027 even though the schools that get the vouchers have no standards for academics or for teacher qualifications.

93% of the voucher schools are sectarian.

In 2018, a study hailed academic gains but critics (including the editorial board of the state’sleading newspaper) quickly pointed out that the study oversampled established Catholic schools, which are a small fraction of the voucher schools. A review of the NC study by the National Education Policy Center found it to be so methodologically flawed as to be useless.

Ever since the Tea Party fringe of the Republican Party took control of the General Assembly, its leaders have been determined to shift funding to charter schools and vouchers for religious schools.

As in Florida, the politicians believe in tough scrutiny of public schools and no scrutiny at all for voucher schools.

Categories Accountability, Funding, North Carolina, Vouchers

Oregon: Tens of Thousands of Teachers Walk Out, Closing 600 Schools, to Protest Working Conditions

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2019 //
3

 

Thousands of teachers in Oregon joined the Red4Ed Movement, walking out to protest overcrowded classes and a lack of support staff, including school nurses and mental health counselors. 

Nearly 45% of all reported classes in Oregon have 26 students or more,” said John Larson, a high school English teacher and president of the Oregon Education Association.
Some classes have 56 or more students, he said.
So instead of going to class, many teachers were taking unpaid days off work to flood at least six protest sites across the state.
The mass exodus of teachers has already forced 25 school districts to close 600 schools Wednesday, Larson said.
The biggest district to close, Portland Public Schools, has more than 46,000 students.
“This is historic,” Larson told a sea of red-shirted teachers, parents and students at a riverfront rally in downtown Portland. “This is what we came here for today — is to make sure that we fund our schools.”
It’s not just funding for smaller class sizes. Union members also want:
— More school counselors. Oregon has half the school counselors that national experts suggest. And the shortage of mental health counselors is a big concern across the country — especially after all the recent school shootings.
— More school librarians. Currently, there are only 158 school librarians in Oregon — less than one librarian per district.
— More school nurses. There’s only one nurse for every 5,481 students. That’s four times less than national recommendations, the OEA said.
— A restoration of art, music and physical education programs that have been cut by budget constraints.
— More funding for school supplies. The OEA said 94% of teachers spend their own money on classroom supplies “to make up the difference between what their students need and what districts can provide.”
— The passage of state House Bill 3427, dubbed the “Student Success Act.” The bill would increase funding for K-12 education by 18%.
Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Class size, Funding, Oregon, Resistance, Teachers

Valerie Strauss: The Tide Is Turning Against Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2019 //
6

 

Valerie Strauss reviews the education budget of the House Appropriations Committee and notes that budget proposal increases the programs that Trump and DeVos while endorsing an unprecedented cut for the Charter Schools Program. As she notes in  the title of the article, the committee concluded that the Education Department was not “a responsible steward” of the charter fund.

Surely, they must have noticed the daily scandals associated with this unaccountable sector.

“Many public school systems are complaining about losing significant funding to charters. Teacher strikes that began in 2018 and have continued this year throughout the country — including in Republican-led states — have helped change the debate about public education funding.”

Strauss writes:

A 2018 report by the Education Department’s inspector general slammed the agency’s oversight of the federal Charter Schools Program and made recommendations for improvement that the House legislation says DeVos’s team has ignored. The agency was accused of the same thing in a2016 inspector general report.

“The committee is deeply concerned that the department does not intend to be a responsible steward of taxpayer dollars when it comes to [Charter Schools Program] funding,” the legislation says.

The committee has included language that would direct the Education Department to implement the recommendations from the 2018 inspector general’s report within six months of the bill’s enactment and brief legislators on its plan within a month.

The legislation also says lawmakers are “concerned” about a recent report issued by the advocacy group the Network for Public Education, which says that as much as $1 billion in federal money was wasted on charter schools that never opened or that closed because of mismanagement and other issues from 2009 to 2016.

Jeanne Allen, leader of the pro-school choice, anti-public school group Center for Education Reform, asks “Who is killing Charter Schools?” and the answer is clear: the Department of Education’s Inspector General, Congressional appropriators, the daily scandals caused by unaccountable charters, the dedicated work of scores of state and local parent organizations, and the Network for Public Education, which is devoted to fighting privatization and profiteering.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization

Gainesville Sun Slams Florida Voucher Plan to Steal Money from Public Schools for Religious Schools

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2019 //
4

 

The Gainesville Sun published an editorial denouncing the newRepublican voucher program, which diverts money from public schools to unaccountable private and religious schools.

“Last week, Florida lawmakers voted to raid taxpayer money meant for public education to pay for middle-income families to send their children to private schools.

“They passed the measure despite these largely religious schools lacking the standards and other requirements that the state has piled on public schools. They passed the legislation despite the Florida Supreme Court rejecting a similar measure as unconstitutional in 2006.

“They even included $250,000 in the state budget for an expected legal fight but are surely expecting a positive outcome this time around before a state Supreme Court that had three new conservative members appointed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

“After all, DeSantis has declared that “if the taxpayer is paying for education, it’s public education.″ He appears unconcerned with the consequences of continuing to divert money meant for traditional public schools to private and charter schools, while saddling traditional public schools with mandates that make it harder for educators to do their jobs and students to succeed.

“The newly passed legislation creates 18,000 vouchers at an initial cost of around $130 million, with the numbers rising in subsequent years. Families making up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level, or $77,250 a year for a family of four, would be eligible for the new vouchers.

“Unlike previous private school “scholarships” provided to lower-income families, the funding for these vouchers would come directly out of the pot of money intended for public schools. Yet the Republican-controlled Legislature rejected amendments proposed by Democrats to increase accountability for these schools to anywhere near the level of their public counterparts…

“Florida has repeatedly ranked near the bottom of the country in teacher pay and per-pupil funding, and the voucher plan in the long term will only make things worse.

“The vouchers will accelerate a two decade-long trend of the state shifting money to private and charter schools at the expense of traditional public schools, creating parallel education systems held to different standards. The trend started under Gov. Jeb Bush, who was in the House chambers last week to celebrate the bill’s passage.”

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Florida, Funding, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Shame

Carol Burris: Florida Charters Are a Swamp of Waste, Fraud, and Profiteering

By dianeravitch
May 5, 2019 //
11

 

Florida is controlled by Swamp creatures who want to divert money from public schools and send it to charter schools and religious schools. Jeb Bush is the puppet master who has demanded strict accountability for public schools, minimal oversight of charter schools, and no accountability at all for religious schools.

In this article, Carol Burris—the executive director of the Network for Public Education—examines the charter school mess. Florida has about three million students. About 300,000 attend charter schools. Some members of the Legislature have direct conflicts of interest but nonetheless vote to shower favors and money on the state’s charters.

Burris reports that nearly half of the state’s charters operate for profit. Entrepreneurs have flocked to Florida to get the easy money.

Burris begins:

Schoolsforsale.com claims to be “the largest school brokers in the United States that you will need to call.” Its owner, Realtor David Mope, is a broker for private schools, online schools and preschools. He will also help you start your own virtual school by providing certified teachers, marketing expertise, and assistance in securing accreditation.

Mope is not a newcomer to the for-profit school world. He was the owner and CEO of Acclaim Academy, a military-style charter chain. Acclaim’s “cadets,” who were predominantly minority students from low-income homes, wore army fatigues and engaged in drills. The schools’ education director, Bill Orris, had previously led a charter school that was shut down after its management company abandoned it.

Warning signs of failure were there from the beginning. The chain aggressively attempted to open new schools in multiple districts before establishing a track record in its two existing schools. Most districts saw red flags, but two did not. In the fall of 2013, two more Acclaim schools were approved, bringing the total schools in the chain to four.

As school grades came in, unsurprisingly, the Acclaim Academy charter schools were rated “F.” In 2015, three closed their doors, leaving families in the lurch in a manner that parents described as chaos. Although Florida’s State Board of Education had allowed the schools to stay open to finish the school year, Mope filed for bankruptcy, sending students out on the street scrambling to enroll in another school with only a few weeks left in the school year. Vendors would never be paid. Parents helped teachers pack up. Nevertheless, Mope pretended the schools were solvent and continued to broker a deal to purchase hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment.

How could Acclaim Academy ever open in the first place? Who would give this risky charter chain the seed money to get started? The American taxpayers did. A U.S. Department of Education Charter Schools Program (CSP) grant for $744,198 helped get the Acclaim Academies off the ground.

Acclaim Academy charter schools were among 502 Florida charter schools that received grants from the Department of Education between 2006 and 2014. All but two came from federal money given to the state for distribution. According to the CSP database, these Florida charter schools were awarded a total of nearly $92 million in federal funds between 2006 and 2014.

At least 184 (36.6 percent) of those schools are now closed, or never opened at all. These defunct charter schools received $34,781,736 in federal “seed” money alone.

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

Boston Picks a New City Superintendent

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2019 //
6

 

The board of the Boston Public Schools selected Brenda Cassellius as its new superintendent. She is the former state superintendent in Minnesota, where she served from 2010 until last January. She is an educator, not a refugee from the corporate world, so that’s a good sign.

The board hopes she will repair relationships that frayed during the brief tenure of Tommy Chang. It is also hoping she will raise test scores,  stop the decline of enrollment, and close achievement gaps.

That is a tall order for any superintendent, and Cassellius would be wise to set her sights on realistic and achievable goals. She will need to obtain new state resources to improve struggling schools, for example, by using research-based methods like reducing class sizes for the students who need e trap attention and support.

”Reformers” like to set public schools up to fail by setting unrealistic goals that they can’t reach in their charters except by kicking out kids they don’t want. The public schools must enroll everyone, including the kids pushed out by charters.

One troubling note. In interviews, Cassellius identified one of her “victories”:

She pointed out that while she served for eight years as education commissioner, she pulled together the state’s teachers union and the administrator and school board associations to craft a new teacher evaluation system. The process included trade-offs, including a major concession by teachers: the use of student test scores in their performance reviews, a practice that teachers nationwide tend to oppose.

Does she know that test-based evaluation has been discredited over the past five years? Does she know that the Gates-funded program to try this methodology in three urban districts and four charter chains was evaluated by AIR and RAND and found to have no effect, other than to discourage teachers from teaching high-needs students, who are likely to reduce their ranking? It did not raise test scores or graduation rates, did not close achievement gaps, and did not weed out “bad” teachers. Teachers oppose it because it is unfair and ineffective.

Cassellius does not arrive spouting Reformer ideology. That’s a good sign. Bostonians must work together to support their public schools and to restore confidence in them. If she can do that, she will succeed.

Categories Accountability, Boston, Education Reform, Funding, Minnesota, Teacher Evaluations

Jan Resseger: How the Federal Charter School Program Defunds Public Schools and Cheats Taxpayers

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2019 //
6

Jan Resseger has another brilliant article about the charter school strategy of privatization paid for by federal funding. 

Betsy DeVos wants to cut most of the programs in the Department of Education but has asked for an increase of charter school funding, from $440 million to $500 million a year. This year she used that funding to give $82 million to KIPP and $116 million to the IDEA charter chain, which is known for high attrition rates.

She cites an article by Jeff Bryant, a co-author of the NPE study of the federal Charter School Program, which concluded that about one of three charter schools funded by the federal government never opens or closes soon after opening. In some states, the failed charters were even more than 1/3.

In Michigan, 42 percent of the federal dollars granted by CSP were wasted on schools that never opened or subsequently closed. The percentage of failure was similar in Ohio (40 percent), Louisiana (46 percent), California (38 percent), and Florida (36 percent).

Resseger notes that Matt Barnum of Chalkbeat wonders whether the size of the grants to KIPP and IDEA, not mom-and-pop charters to be sure, will fuel the growing backlash to privatization by charters.

Resseger makes clear that charters damage public schools by defunding them.

The effect of charter school expansion is a serious threat to the finances of traditional public school districts. When students leave a public school system to attend a charter school they carry away money from the school district’s budget. There are charter promoters who allege that, because the exiting students no longer require the services public school districts are providing, the fiscal impact is neutral.  However, the political economist, Gordon Lafer counters this argument forcefully in a report published a year ago by In the Public Interest: “To the casual observer, it may not be obvious why charter schools should create any net costs at all for their home districts. To grasp why they do, it is necessary to understand the structural differences between the challenge of operating a single school—or even a local chain of schools—and that of a district-wide system operating tens or hundreds of schools and charged with the legal responsibility to serve all students in the community.  When a new charter school opens, it typically fills its classrooms by drawing students away from existing schools in the district. By California state law, school funding is based on student attendance; when a student moves from a traditional public school to a charter school, her pro-rated share of school funding follows her to the new school. Thus, the expansion of charter schools necessarily entails lost funding for traditional public schools and school districts. If schools and district offices could simply reduce their own expenses in proportion to the lost revenue, there would be no fiscal shortfall. Unfortunately this is not the case.”

Lafer continues, detailing the costs public school districts cannot immediately cut when students leave for charter schools: “If, for instance, a given school loses five percent of its student body—and that loss is spread across multiple grade levels, the school may be unable to lay off even a single teacher… Plus, the costs of maintaining school buildings cannot be reduced…. Unless the enrollment falloff is so steep as to force school closures, the expense of heating and cooling schools, running cafeterias, maintaining digital and wireless technologies, and paving parking lots—all of this is unchanged by modest declines in enrollment. In addition, both individual schools and school districts bear significant administrative responsibilities that cannot be cut in response to falling enrollment. These include planning bus routes and operating transportation systems; developing and auditing budgets; managing teacher training and employee benefits; applying for grants and certifying compliance with federal and state regulations; and the everyday work of principals, librarians and guidance counselors.” “If a school district anywhere in the country—in the absence of charter schools—announced that it wanted to create a second system-within-a-system, with a new set of schools whose number, size, specialization, budget, and geographic locations would not be coordinated with the existing school system, we would regard this as the poster child of government inefficiency and a waste of tax dollars. But this is indeed how the charter school system functions.”

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Privatization, U.S. Department of Education

Oklahoma: For-Profit Online Charter Chain Gobbles Up Rural Districts

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2019 //
23

 

Oklahoma has underfunded its public schools over the past decade. Many districts have switched to a four-day week to save money.

Some rural districts, facing insolvency, are turning their schools over to Epic, a for-profit online charter chain, which can balance the books by putting kids online and cutting teachers’ jobs.

Like all online charter schools, EPIC overstates its “gains” while its actual results are less than mediocre.

“To save his financially imperiled school district, Panola Superintendent Brad Corcoran in 2017 pitched a plan to convert the traditional public district into a charter school. 

“In becoming a charter, Panola Public Schools would turn over its management to a company affiliated with Epic Charter Schools, the largest online school in the state. The school board agreed. 

“The Epic-related firm contributed $100,000 toward Panola’s debt as part of the agreement. That company manages the small district for a more than 10 percent cut of its funding.  Panola’s high school students now have the option to attend most classes online from home.

“The deal was unprecedented. Not only was it one of the first conversions-to-charter in the state, it allowed Epic’s company to operate a school and gain many benefits denied other charter schools: It could tap into and spend local property tax revenue to cover costs of student transportation, school buildings and sports facilities, like traditional school districts.

“And Epic didn’t stop at Panola….”

Epic has 23,000 in Oklahoma and it is growing in California as well.

”Trice Butler, superintendent of Wilburton Public Schools, which neighbors Panola, said she is concerned that Epic is looking to replicate what it’s done in Panola in other districts.

“Butler said her primary concern is her belief that students at Epic are receiving a subpar education. She cited Epic’s low high school graduation rates and high numbers of students leaving Epic and returning to traditional schools with academic credit insufficient for the time they were enrolled. (Epic maintains that some students come to them behind in credits and the school helps them catch up.)

“Epic’s presence in Panola has also raised concerns about aggressive attempts to attract students and teachers from surrounding school districts even in the middle of the academic year.

”Panola spent $650 for postcards, and at least some were sent to addresses in nearby Wilburton school district, promising a customized education for students and touting the school’s “double-digit academic growth.”

“Butler called this “predatory marketing” and said the statements made on the postcard are misleading.

“Panola elementary students did post positive academic growth on the latest school report cards, with 80 percent of students improving between 2016-17 and 2017-18. But only 27 percent of those students scored on grade level, compared with 57 percent in Wilburton and 51 percent statewide.”

Oklahoma has followed a policy of large tax cuts for corporations, especially those in the oil, gas, and fracking industry, and budget cuts for education and other public services. The state is abandoning its future.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Education Reform, For-Profit, Funding, Oklahoma, Online Education, Virtual Charter Schools
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