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AFT Documents Massive Underfunding of Public Schools

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2018 //
9

This Report was released by the American Federation of Teachers.

Education Underfunding Tops $19 Billion over Decade of Neglect
Report Unveils Link Between GOP Tax Cuts and Gutting of Public K-12 and Higher Education Post-Recession

PITTSBURGH—Governments in 25 states have shortchanged public K-12 education by $19 billion over the last decade, with low-tax Republican states guilty of the worst underfunding, a groundbreaking report by the American Federation of Teachers, released today, reveals.

“A Decade of Neglect: Public Education Funding in the Aftermath of the Great Recession” details for the first time the devastating impact on schools, classrooms and students when states choose to pursue an austerity agenda in the false belief that tax cuts will pay for themselves.

The comprehensive report offers a deep dive into the long-term austerity agendas and historic disinvestment that sparked the wave of nationwide walkouts this spring.

Among the findings: K-12 education is drastically underfunded in every single state in the United States. When you control for inflation, there are 25 states that spent less on K-12 education in 2016 than they did prior to the recession. But there are signs of the negative impact of austerity even in states with relatively stronger investment in schools.

Chronic underfunding explains why, in 38 states, the average teacher salary is lower in 2018 than it was in 2009, and why the pupil-teacher ratio was worse in 35 states in 2016 than in 2008.

While the recession may have forced budget cuts on our schools, the report exposes how Republican legislators and governors prolonged the damage by cutting taxes for the rich at the expense of public schools.

A majority of Americans instead support repealing tax cuts for the rich and using that money to invest in education, infrastructure and healthcare.

The report measures each state’s “tax effort”—that is, how much they tax, compared with how rich they are. Of the 25 states with the worst K-12 funding, 18 of them have taxed their residents less since the recession. Five of the 11 states with the lowest K-12 funding—Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas—are also among those with the lowest taxes on the rich.

The problem only gets worse in higher education, where 41 states spent less per student, creating a massive affordability and accessibility gap. This explains why tuition and fees for a two-year degree in 2017 rose at three times the rate of inflation when compared with 2008, and why the cost of a four-year degree rose even higher, putting college woefully out of reach for far too many Americans.

“These problems belong squarely at the feet of elected officials, many of them Republicans, who rather than investing in our future, insisted on ushering in counterproductive austerity,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten. “When legislators choose to prioritize millionaires over children, our country suffers. And when our education secretary says that money doesn’t matter in schools, we tell teachers, parents and children that they don’t matter either.”

The report was accompanied by a key resolution, considered by delegates today at the AFT’s biennial convention, to turn the data into action. “The Fight for Investment in Our Future and the Fight Against Austerity” states, in part, that the AFT “will … investigate legislative, policy and grass-roots solutions to increase investment in public services, including the identification of new revenue streams,” and “will work to channel the activism we are witnessing across the country in this moment into a movement for enduring change by electing pro-public education, pro-worker candidates in November.”

Read the full report here.

Click to access decade-of-neglect-2018.pdf

Categories Budget Cuts, Education Industry, Funding

Greg Windle: Did Philadelphia’s Superintendent William Hite Meet His Goals?

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2018 //
5

Greg Windle wrote an exemplary report on the record of Philadelphia Superintendent William Hite, who took Office in 2012.

He makes clear that there are many metrics, not only test scores, and many actors, including the governor and the legislature.

Education writers, take note. This is a treasure trove of information that the people of the city need to know.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Budget Cuts, Funding, Philadelphia

NYC Charter CEOS Get Huge Paychecks

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2018 //
11

The New York Post reported on the really huge payouts that charter CEOs receive in NYC.

Eva Moskowitz received total compensation of $782,175 in 2016. It is surely larger by now.

https://nypost.com/2018/07/14/charter-school-ceos-get-massive-paychecks-thanks-to-private-donors/

“Eva Moskowitz, CEO of the 46-school Success Academy network, received a pay package totaling $782,175 in 2016.

“The nonprofit network paid Moskowitz $195,000 in base compensation and she received another $255,000 in salary plus a $300,000 bonus from the affiliated Success Foundation.

“The foundation was set up in 2012 with a mission to support the Success Academy schools. It has taken in $1 million in donations in the last two years – with the cash coming each year, all from a single undisclosed donor.

“A Success Academy spokeswoman said the foundation’s sole function was “supplementing the compensation of the CEO.”

“The city’s 227 charter schools are privately run, but get public money for each student and also raise private donations. Nearly half belong to nonprofit management organizations like the Success Academy network, which get a mix of government grants, private donations and fees from the schools they oversee.

“Geoffrey Canada, who stepped down as CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone in 2014, received a whopping $1 million bonus the following year when he began serving as president of the nonprofit organization which operates two charter schools and a variety of other programs.

“Anne Williams-Isom, who replaced Canada as CEO, received total compensation of $734,299 in 2016, including a base salary of $278,793 and a $212,955 bonus, along with deferred compensation of $234,514, according to the organization’s tax filing.

“A Harlem Children’s Zone spokesman said Canada’s bonus was cash that accumulated in a deferred compensation plan designed to “help retain its most senior staff.” He said the compensation and Williams-Isom’s pay came from private funds.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Funding

Stuart Egan: Who Is Behind the Assault on Public Education in North Carolina?

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2018 //
4

NBCT High School Teacher Stuart Egan writes here that public school enrollment in North Carolina has dropped to 81%,just as the Tea Party Republicans hoped. As public schools are starved of resources, growing numbers switch to religious schools, charter schools, virtual charters and Home schools.

Who has made this happen, in addition to the Tea Party?

“Consider the following national entities:

*Teach For America
*Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
*Walton Family Foundation
*Eli Broad Foundation
*KIPP Charter Schools
*Democrats For Educational Reform
*Educational Reform Now
*StudentsFirst
*America Succeeds
*50CAN
*American Legislative Exchange Council
*National Heritage Academies
*Charter School USA
*Team CFA
*American Federation for Children

“They are all at play in North Carolina, totally enabled by the powers-that-be in the NC General Assembly and their supportive organizations.”

Think of it: 81% of the students in the state attend public schools, but they don’t matter!

To make matters worse, all the alternatives are worse than a well-funded public school.

North Carolina’s education is slipping into a deep hole. It is funding failure.

Betsy DeVos can add another notch to her belt unless the citizens rise up to save their schools.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Reform, Failure, Fraud, Funding, North Carolina, Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers

Jan Resseger: Teachers Are Leading the Fight for Funding in Red States

By dianeravitch
July 14, 2018 //
19

Jan Resseger reports here on the role of teachers in Oklahoma and Arizona in leading the fight against tax-cutting Tea Party ideologues whose cruel zeal is hurting children and denying them a decent education.

She begins by citing an article in “The Nation” about Oklahoma, where taxes had not gone up since 1990 until the teacher protests this spring:

“Covert [the author of the article] introduces us to Scott Helton, a high school English teacher whose school opted to save money with online textbooks instead of buying the printed copies. But the school hasn’t enough computers and its Wi-Fi is inadequate. He has been forced to spend his own money to provide readings for his students. Ten years ago, his classes averaged 20 students; today they are packed with 35, and in once case 40 students, many of whom sit on the floor. We also learn about underpaid workers in other government agencies including Gail DeLashaw, a family-support worker in the Department of Human Services, whose salary is $30,000, 60 percent of the national average for someone like DeLashaw with an advanced degree. Her case load—once 500 or 600—has risen to 1,200 families.”

In Arizona, teachers and parents gathered 270,000 signatures to put a referendum on the ballot to raise taxes for education. Gov. Doug Ducey and his allies, of course, will fight it. Ducey is up for re-election. Democrats will choose his opponent in a primary next month. The leading contender on the Democratic ballot is David Garcia, a strong fighter for funding education. Garcia is a professor of education at Arizona State University. Polls show him tied with Ducey, or even ahead of him.

Categories Arizona, Budget Cuts, Education Reform, Funding, Oklahoma

Jennifer Berkshire: Hopeful Signs of a Movement to Save Public Schools in Wisconsin

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2018 //
4

Jennifer Berkshire writes here of the encouraging signs of a strong grassroots movement to save public schools in Wisconsin, despite the best efforts of Governor Scott Walker and the Republican Legislature to crush the teachers’ union and to offer school choice, both charters and vouchers.

She begins:

“It would be easy to write the story of Wisconsin’s current union landscape as a tragedy. In this version of events, the bomb that Governor Scott Walker and his allies dropped on the state’s public sector unions has worked just as intended: The ranks of the unions have thinned; their coffers are depleted; their influence over the state and its legislative priorities has been reduced to where, in 2017, the state teachers’ union no longer employed a lobbyist at the statehouse.

“All of this is true.

“But there is another, more hopeful story to be told about Wisconsin, seven years after Walker officially kicked off his war on labor. It involves parents and teachers and local grassroots activists coming together to fight for the public schools in their communities. While Walker and the Republicans who control Wisconsin’s legislature got their way in 2011, there is a robust ongoing debate, throughout the state, about the role of public education and who should pay for it.

“Just as in West Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arizona, and Colorado, states roiled by teacher and parent uprisings this spring, school funding has emerged as a flashpoint in Wisconsin. In the place where the modern era of scorched-earth-style state politics began, local activism around public education may just transform Wisconsin’s political culture.”

She identifies groups that are working in a nonpartisan way to increase school funding, to offset the dramatic tax cuts that ravaged their public schools.

State leadership has a simple ethos: “Privatize everything.”

By contrast, parents and teachers are mobilizing to keep their schools funded.

“Today, the Wisconsin Public Education Network is at the forefront of a statewide effort to support Wisconsin’s public schools and the 860,000 students who attend them. DuBois Bourenane and a small army of parents, teachers, school officials, and ordinary citizens are shining a relentless spotlight on the $2 billion in cuts made to the schools here by Walker and the GOP-led legislature, and demanding a fix to Wisconsin’s deeply inequitable school funding system.”

She identifies other groups that have formed to defend students and public schools.

One of the biggest drains on the state education budget is vouchers. Advocates have pushed the idea of breaking out the costs of vouchers so taxpayers can see clearly what vouchers cost them. In Milwaukee alone, where 32,000 students use vouchers, the cost was $269 Million in the last year alone. (Voucher students do not get better results than those in public schools).

Ironically, Gov. Walker is running again as “the education governor,” despite the fact that school funding is less now than a decade ago.

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding, Milwaukee, Privatization, School Choice, Unions, Vouchers, Walker, Scott, Wisconsin

New Jersey: Reversing Chris Christie’s Sustained Assault on Public Schools Begins Under Democratic Governor

By dianeravitch
July 11, 2018 //
18

Governor Chris Christie did his damndest to harm the public schoolsin New Jersey during his eight years in Office. Its public schools are among the best in the nation outside of the so-called Abbott districts, a group of highly segregated, impoverished school districts that Christie determined to hand over to private charter chains.

The Education Law Center provides an update hereon Governor Phil Murphy’s efforts to reverse Christie’s foul legacy.

At the end of June, the New Jersey Legislature passed the FY19 State Budget and several other bills impacting the state’s 1.4 million public school students.

“Over the last eight years, lawmakers did little to prevent former Governor Chris Christie from cutting school funding; imposing PARCC exams as the high school exit test in violation of state law; and rapidly expanding charter schools, depleting resources and fueling student segregation in Newark, Camden, Trenton and other districts.

“With Governor Phil Murphy’s election, legislative leaders had the opportunity to reverse course by taking bold steps to restore equity, adequacy and opportunity for public school children, especially those at risk and with special needs.

“So did legislators heed the call for change?”

“Here’s a recap of the major actions taken by the Legislature on public education:

“School Funding: The FY19 Budget contains a $340 million increase in K-12 funding, with much of those funds allocated to districts spending below their constitutional level of adequacy under the SFRA funding formula. Yet other districts, including many below or slightly above adequacy, will have their state aid reduced by a total of over $600 million in seven years under changes to the formula pushed by Senate President Stephen Sweeney. While some last minute changes may mitigate the full impact of the cuts, many districts are facing the grim prospect of laying off teachers and support staff and eliminating needed programs as the reductions in state aid accelerate in the coming years.

“Preschool: The FY19 Budget includes $57 million in SFRA preschool education aid, providing the first increase in per pupil funding for existing preschool programs since 2013-14. It includes $32.5 million to address years of flat funding and adds $25 million for expansion of high quality preschool to low-income students across the state, as promised in the SFRA formula.

“School Construction: In passing a bill to authorize $500 million in school construction funds targeted to county vocational school districts, lawmakers did nothing to address the urgent need for school construction funding in all other school districts across the state. Legislators turned a blind-eye to the stark fact that the state school construction program has run out of money for 381 health and safety, capital maintenance and major projects recently identified by the NJ Department of Education for urban districts, as well as for grants for needed facilities improvements in hundreds of “regular operating districts.”

“Camden Charter School Expansion: Lawmakers bypassed the education committees in both chambers to rush through a bill to allow three out-of-state charter chains – KIPP, Uncommon and Mastery – to continue to expand across the city and, in the process, pave the way for these private charter operators to close and replace most or all of Camden’s public schools.

Private School Vouchers: Legislators decided to table a bill to use public funds to pay the salaries of science and math teachers in private schools. The bill would have added millions more to the over $110 million in public funds already allocated to private schools for textbooks, security, nurses and remedial programs. Lawmakers failed to take action to reduce the millions in taxpayer dollars diverted to private schools and to redirect those dollars to the state’s chronically underfunded public schools.

“The Legislature completely avoided other pressing issues, such as the looming high school graduation testing crisis, the need to reform the state’s charter school law, and the consolidation of K-6 and K-8 districts into unified K-12 districts across the state.

“The scorecard on the Legislature’s actions on public education is decidedly mixed. But one lesson is clear. Advocates for our public school students and their schools must redouble efforts to hold elected officials to account for advancing, and not threatening, the right of all children to a thorough and efficient education, as guaranteed under our state constitution.

“David Sciarra is the Executive Director of Education Law Center and lead counsel for the plaintiff school children in Abbott v. Burke.”

Education Law Center Press Contact:
Sharon Krengel
Policy and Outreach Director
skrengel@edlawcenter.org
973-624-1815, x 24

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

How Red States Slashed Taxes, Cut Education Budgets, and Nearly Went Bankrupt

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2018 //
16

After the 2010 elections, when anti-tax Tea Party Republicans swept many states, they had a chance to perform a radical experiment. They bet that slashing corporate taxes and individual taxes would be a shot in the arm to their economy, creating new jobs and more revenue. They were wrong. The deep tax cuts reduced public revenues, harmed public services, especially education, and did not produce economic growth.

This article in The Nation explains it.

“Oklahoma isn’t typically a big-spending state, even under Democratic governors. But until eight years ago, Democrats held most statewide offices and maintained some power in the Legislature. Then, in 2010, a number of Tea Party candidates were elected to office. The GOP increased its majorities in the Legislature and, after winning the governor’s race, controlled the entire statehouse for the first time in Sooner history.

“Oklahoma wasn’t the only state that got a fresh coat of red paint. Republicans had full control of just 14 state legislatures in 2010, while Democrats held power in 27. After the November elections that year, Republicans held majority power in 25, including Oklahoma.

“The newly empowered Republicans didn’t sit on their hands; they got to work implementing an extreme anti-tax Tea Party agenda. But now the damage those decisions have wreaked is becoming abundantly clear—not just in underfunded schools and crumbling infrastructure, but in lagging economies and angry constituents. States are supposed to be the “laboratories of democracy,” in the famous phrase of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, putting new ideas to the test. But the Tea Party experiment of drastically cutting taxes in the hopes of sparking economic growth has blown up in lawmakers’ faces.

“Oklahoma legislators had already reduced income taxes back in the mid-2000s, and an amendment added to the state constitution in 1992 makes it all but impossible to raise taxes, requiring approval from a three-quarters supermajority of lawmakers. Lowering them requires only a simple majority.

“The Tea Party experiment of drastically cutting taxes in the hopes of sparking economic growth has blown up in lawmakers’ faces.

“But the politics after 2011 were different. “The Republicans swept,” said David Blatt, executive director of the Oklahoma Policy Institute, a progressive think tank. “We never had a Republican governor with a Republican legislature.”

“State lawmakers came “out of the gate in 2011 with a pretty regressive, large-scale tax-cut plan,” said Meg Wiehe, deputy director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), a nonprofit, tax-focused research group. Led by Governor Fallin, the Oklahoma GOP wanted to scrap the income tax entirely—a plan that was the brainchild of conservative economist Arthur Laffer, the self-described “father of supply-side economics.”

If we lived in a rational world, everyone would agree that we learned an important lesson. Draconian tax cuts benefit the wealthy and do not produce economic growth. They require government to starve essential services. Unfortunately we do not live in a rational world.

Teachers and parents are angry. Will their anger suffice to throw the bums out?

Categories Budget Cuts, Education Reform, Funding, Kansas, Oklahoma

Jeremy Mohler: Charter Schools Are NOT Progressive, They Are a Way to Disinvest in Public Schools

By dianeravitch
June 24, 2018 //
8

Jeremy Mohler, on behalf of “In the Public Interest,” explains why charter schools are a perfect fit for the Trump administration. They are a way of disinvesting in public schools.

From rural Pennsylvania to Nashville to Oakland, charter schools are taking already limited education funding, forcing local school boards to make difficult choices about what to cut at traditional, neighborhood schools to make up the difference. They cost the San Diego Unified School District $65.9 million last year, alongside $124 million in budget cuts the district was forced to make, including laying off teachers and slashing preschool.

Here’s how it works: when a student transfers to a charter school, all the funding for that student leaves with them, while all the costs do not. The student’s old school can’t lower it’s heating bill, make its principal part-time, or pay a teacher less because she has one less student.

“What’s happened with the proliferation of so many charter schools is that sometimes it just becomes a parallel school district and actually bleeds away money from neighborhood schools,” said John Lee Evans, a board trustee for San Diego Unified School District.

By supporting charter schools—and requesting more charter school funding in the federal budget—Trump has thrown his weight behind making the status quo even worse. And that’s on top of the tax cuts he helped usher through Congress earlier this year, which overwhelmingly benefit corporations and the wealthy, and could very likely force Washington to cut education spending even more.

Of course, the president isn’t alone. Democratic mayors in cities like Chicago and Washington, D.C., have embraced charter schools to sidestep criticism and teacher demands for better pay and more student resources.

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

What We Learned from the NPE-Schott Foundation Report on Privatization of Public Funds

By dianeravitch
June 23, 2018 //
15

The Network for Public Education and the Schott Foundation for Public Education released a report grading the states on their support for public education and documenting the extent to which states are allowing the privatization of public funds.

The report can be found here.It will be regularly updated to reflect changing events.

The livestream of the press briefing, featuring John Jackson, president of the Schott Foundation, Carol Burris of the Network for Public Education, and me is on the Schott Foundation Facebook page.

Here is my perspective on what we learned.

Currently, 9% of American students attend private and religious schools; 6% attend charter schools; and 85% attend public schools.

The public does not realize that every dollar spent for a charter or a voucher is a dollar subtracted from public schools. No state has added extra dollars for charters or vouchers. They simply take money away from public schools, which most students attend

Charters and vouchers are a substitute for fully funding our public schools.

As we saw in the dramatic wave of teacher strikes this past spring, our public schools, which educate 85% of all students, are being systematically underfunded.

Privatization is diverting money from public schools.

Take Indiana, for example. There are more than 1 million students in Indiana. Of that number, 35,000 use vouchers. This is 3.5% of the students in the state. Vouchers cost the state $153 million this past year, which causes budget cuts in every district. The Fort Wayne Community Schools alone lost $20 million. Nearly 60% of the voucher students never attended a public school. The voucher program is an explicit way for the state to fund religious schools. In addition, Indiana has 4% of its students in charter schools, another loss to district budgets. Please note that despite the rhetoric of the politicians, the overwhelming majority of students are choosing public schools, not using vouchers or enrolling in charters. This is the case even though more than half the students in the state are eligible for a voucher.

Consider Florida. Its state constitution explicitly bans the spending of public dollars in religious schools. In 2012, Jeb Bush pressed for a constitutional amendment that would remove that explicit ban (he called his amendment, Proposition 8, the “Religious Liberty Amendment”). Despite the appealing name, the voters decided by a margin of 55-45% NOT to repeal the ban on funding religious schools with public dollars. Nonetheless, Florida now has four different voucher programs. Their total cost, according to calculations done by Carol Burris, the executive director of NPE, is nearly $1 billion annually. Florida has 2.7 million school-age children. About 250,000 (10%) are in privately managed charter schools; another 140,000 (5%) use vouchers. Despite the widespread availability of charters and vouchers, despite the Legislature’s love affair with school choice, the overwhelming majority of students in Florida enroll in public schools.

While writing this privatization report, Burris calculated that about $2.4 billion is diverted from public schools to voucher schools, which are not accountable and are often evangelical schools that do not teach modern science or history and are not subject to civil rights protections.

Add to that the likely cost of charters. There are 3 million students currently enrolled in charters, out of a total student enrollment in the U.S. of 50 million. States vary in the amount they allot to charters. If the average state allotment is $5,000–and it could be higher–then that is another $15 billion subtracted from public schools to pay for privately managed charters.

That’s $17 Billion withdrawn from the public schools that enroll 85% of students.

In other words, the great majority of students are losing funding for their public school to support the choices of a very small minority.

Even in states where public officials are under the thumb of the choice lobbyists, there is no stampede for vouchers or charters. A small minority in every state are choosing to attend a charter or voucher, even in a state like Florida.

The vast majority are enrolled in public schools, and their public schools are cutting budgets, laying off teachers, increasing class sizes, and losing programs like the arts, so that a tiny minority can use public dollars to attend charter schools or voucher schools, where teachers are less qualified and less experienced.

This diversion of public dollars is hurting public schools whose doors are open to all.

The real cost of privatization is paid by the 47 million children who choose public schools.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Funding, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers
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