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Mississippi: What Happens When a State Refuses to Fund Its Public Schools

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2018 //
13

Mississippi is usually ranked #49 or 50 or 51 on any measure of poverty or funding for schools. Of course, its students have low scores because standardized tests accurately measure family income.

A state that refuses to fund its schools will have high poverty, a poorly educated citizenry and workforce, and a stagnant economy.

In 2015, educators and parents tried to pass a state referendum to force the Legislature to spend more, but a coalition of very wealthy people from inside and outside the state swamped the voters with propaganda and defeated the referendum. The Koch brothers debated a quarter million dollars (pocket change for them) to ensure that poor black and white children in Mississippi did not get enough funding to offer a decent education.

I recently posted Jeff Bryant’s Report on the pending state takeover of the public schools in Jackson, Mississippi. First, they underfund the schools, then they declare they are failing. And officials who can’t provide a decent education anywhere in the state plan to impose their will on the children of Jackson. You can be sure that their solution is charter schools, not more funding.

A teacher in Jackson wrote this comment after she read Jeff’s article.


Diane, you and I have corresponded several times over the years about the conditions in my school in Jackson. I regret to inform you that the conditions of the physical plant are now beyond words. When I was moved from a classroom with carpet that hadn’t been cleaned in years, a room where I fought respiratory and skin ailments for years, I found my new room infected with black mold. It took a few weeks and a trip to the doctor, but I got that mitigated to the point where I can deal with it.

Then over the Christmas holidays, the city of Jackson suffered a cold snap that destroyed the city water system. Jackson Public Schools had to close for a week due to the water crisis. When we resumed classes, our building’s pipes, I believe had also frozen, leading to a re-occurrence of a sewer line break that has literally rendered the main hall and its classrooms a s—hole. About fifteen years ago, the same situation had occurred when I was also on the main hall. Eventually the district dealt with the situation by going under the building to dig out the contaminated soil and re-plumbing the pipes.

I’ve told everyone who will listen, but the situation only got worse until they finally closed the restroom when the new poop was coming from. Even so, there is always a lingering odor of raw sewage which becomes unbearable after a rain and when the temperature warms up. When I was checking out of my room this week, the stench gagged me, and I swelled up with tears because the whole situation is just so surreal.

The facilities manager was in the building and I told him that I had been trying to decide whose office I needed to visit with a box of poop to put on the desk and ask “How would you like to smell this all day every day?” I told him that it would be his office. He assured me that they will address it this summer.

I also told this story to the principal who related that there is the intent to go back under the building, dig the dirt out again, and once more re-plumb the pipes. If it is effective, then it should hold out long enough to get me through to retirement.

Jackson Public Schools announced this week that they will issue a bond to put money into repairing aging buildings. Our building is one of the oldest in the city, with the distinctions of once having been the only high school in the state for African Americans. We’ll see if our building’s problems will be adequately addressed.

It is absolutely true that the power brokers in this state don’t want to pay for African American children to be educated. When Jackson Public Schools mainly educated the children of the power brokers, the schools were just fine. Now that those children are educated in the private and suburban schools, we see those schools excelling. Meanwhile, the students left in tax-poor JPS are languishing in second-world conditions.

My experience leads me to advocate for a new school funding mechanism that does not put schools at the mercy or benefit of their local tax base. Our country is clearly OK with relegating a third of our children to poverty and its consequences or we would have already done something about it.

(Thank you for letting me rant.)

Lorraine

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Funding, Koch Brothers, Mississippi, Poverty, Privatization, Racism

Oklahoma: What It is Like to Teach in an Underfunded School

By dianeravitch
May 30, 2018 //
11

Melissa Smith is a teacher at US Grant High School in Oklahoma City and a member of the AFT. She writes here about the effect of dramatic budget cuts on her school.

Unless you are in a school every day, you might not see the results of underfunding education. That is because we open our doors no matter what, and my colleagues and I will do everything we can to make sure our students get the education they deserve. But just because the consequences are invisible doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem. Isn’t that the definition of privilege? Thinking something isn’t a problem simply because it might not be a problem for you?

You have probably heard about the recent teacher walkout in Oklahoma. While some of that was about teacher salaries, it was more about the conditions in our schools – conditions that resulted from years of underfunding education.

The Oklahoma City public schools district is the largest in the state, serving about 46,000 students. Because of relentless decreases in funding from the Oklahoma legislature, our district has had to cut almost $40m in the past two years. This has resulted in our fine arts budgets being slashed by 50%, our library media budgets being completely eliminated and district officials being forced to end the school year days early.

Our school system also has 58 classrooms that are “split-level”. This means a teacher is required to teach two different curricula to two different grade levels at the same time in the same classroom. And our teachers do this without the help of a teaching assistant…

Our classes are extremely overcrowded, with 30 and 40 students per class. Some of us don’t even have enough desks for our students to sit in. Coach Aaron McVay, one of our PE teachers, has had classes of more than 80 students. How much learning happens in a class of 80?

Some teachers don’t even have classrooms. They keep their belongings, textbooks and supplies on carts and push them from classroom to classroom, hour to hour. I have been a traveling teacher. Like some of our fellow union members who are adjunct college professors and hold “office hours” in their cars and nurses who travel from school to school, fingers crossed, hoping no one at a school across town will suffer a health crisis, it is almost impossible to be an effective educator while carting your work around…

The cut that hurt most was losing our two maintenance workers, Gerald and Joe, whose positions were eliminated when our district was forced to cut the first $30m in 2017. Gerald and Joe kept our building running. Without them, nothing seems to work. Last August, we had days without air conditioning. It was common for my classroom to reach 90 degrees by 9am. In fact, Cristina Moershel taught her class outside because it was cooler there than in her classroom. Outside. In August. In Oklahoma. She used a dry erase marker on the window to teach calculus while her students sat on the ground.

Our current history textbook is so old that the Oklahoma City bombing only gets a couple of pages in the epilogue
Now, think about how much these problems would be exacerbated if some of this year’s proposed cuts to federal funding were to go through.

Cuts would make it impossible to retain qualified teachers instead of losing them at the rate of almost 400 per month. If there are cuts to federal programs for low-income students or students with disabilities, what else will my school have to sacrifice to provide the services they need? How will these cuts help students graduate and take on the world?

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding, Oklahoma

Jan Resseger: The Single Best Article About the Oklahoma Teachers’ Strike

By dianeravitch
May 30, 2018 //
9

I had planned to write a post about the excellent article in the New Yorker about the Oklahoma teachers’ strike, but discovered this morning that Jan Resseger, one of my favorite bloggers, beat me to the punch. The article by Rivera Galchen clearly connects the red state anti-tax policies and the underfunding of schools.

She writes:


Watching teachers walk out this spring has startled America in these discouraging times, but nowhere was it as moving as in Oklahoma. The teachers walked out, and, grateful that teachers had figured out a way to expose desperate conditions in the schools, school superintendents and school boards—the management—shut down school for two weeks and walked with their teachers in gratitude. At the statehouse itself the protestors walked into a brick wall. More than just demonstrating what is missing from their classrooms, they showed what decent concern for our children would require of us as citizens and what—across too many of our states—one-party, anti-tax state legislators and governors are quite satisfied to deny.

Rivka Galchen profiles the Oklahoma walkout in this week’s New Yorker magazine. Galchen, who accompanied and learned to know many teachers, reflects on her own experience of the strike and on the lives of teachers she came to know.

Even before the strike when they worried about a possible walkout, members of the legislature proposed a modest raise. But teachers, desperate about the conditions for children in their schools, refused to cancel the walkout. Galchen writes: “Teachers in Oklahoma are paid less than those in West Virginia, which spends forty percent more per pupil than Oklahoma does… In response to the threat of a walkout, the Republican-dominated Oklahoma legislature offered teachers a pay raise of around six thousand dollars a year. It funded the raise with an assortment of tax bills, most of which disproportionately affect the poor—a cigarette tax, a diesel tax, an Amazon sales tax, an expansion of ball and dice gambling, and a five-dollar-per-room hotel-motel tax. The Republicans touted the move as historic, and it was: the legislature hadn’t passed a tax increase since 1990.”

Galchen carefully defines the constraints placed on the state by years of anti-tax governments: “Oklahoma has essentially been under single-party rule for about a decade. The state legislature is eighty percent Republican, and in the most recent midterm elections the Democrats didn’t field a candidate in nearly half the races. Governor Fallin is in her eighth year, and during her tenure nearly all state agencies have seen cuts of between ten and thirty percent, even as the population that those agencies serve has increased. A capital-gains tax break was configured in such a way that two-thirds of the benefit went to the eight hundred wealthiest families in the state. An income-tax reduction similarly benefited primarily the wealthy. The tax on fracked oil was slashed, and when it was nudged back up—it remains the lowest in the nation—the energy billionaire and political kingmaker Harold Hamm, whose estimated net worth is quadruple the budget that the legislature allocates to the state, stood in the gallery of the capitol, letting the lawmakers know that he was watching. Reversing tax cuts is never easy, but it’s almost impossible in Oklahoma. In 1992, a law was passed requiring that any bill to raise taxes receive the assent of the governor and three-quarters of the legislature.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding, Oklahoma

North Carolina: General Assembly Passes Budget to Hurt Public Schools and Enrich Charters

By dianeravitch
May 29, 2018 //
6

Remember that thousands of teachers from across North Carolina took a personal day to assemble at the State Capitol on May 16 to protest the underfunding of public education?

Maybe you forgot, but you are not alone if you did. The North Carolina General Assembly passed a budget without hearings that is a dagger in the heart of public schools.

It contains plenty of goodies for charter schools and cybercharters.

But it expresses contempt for public schools and their teachers. The extremists now in charge of the General Assembly won’t be content until they have privatized every school in the state.

NBCT teacher Stuart Egan explains the budget here.

Categories Funding, North Carolina

NonProfit Quarterly: The New Balancing Act of Public Schools

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2018 //
10

Martin Levine has become one of my favorite writers on education. He writes for NonProfit Quarterly (free online) and other publications. He really understands that privatization is about “me first, to hell with the rest of you.”

Here is his commentary on the recent Gordon Lafer study of the fiscal impact of charters on the public schools they leave behind.

Oakland is a textbook example of a district that is being systematically hollowed out by the proliferation of charter schools. Oakland has lurched from deficit to deficit, while controlled for years by Broadie superintendents, who encouraged the destruction of the district by charters.

He writes:

A recent look at public education in Oakland raises important questions about whether maximizing choice comes at the cost of equity.

Choice advocates have said all students would benefit from maximizing a parent’s ability to choose their child’s school. The introduction of independent charter schools, they believe, harnesses market forces to reward better schools and ultimately force poor schools to close. Following this logic, we will be left with better schools. But while charter schools can focus only on the students who choose their programs, traditional school districts remain responsible for all of the children in their districts. When funding follows each student to their school of choice, those choosing to remain in public schools are finding themselves resource-starved. Overall, educational equity and school choice may not be able to coexist.

Charter schools are about what is best for “me.” Public schools are about what is best for all.

In the age of Trump, individualism trumps the common good.

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

Texas: Are We Willing to Settle for Mediocrity?

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2018 //
17

Jimmie Don Aycock was one of the best friends of public education in the state legislature. He fought for public schools when they were under siege by penny-pinching legislators who cut $5 Billion from the schools in 2011. The state’s economy rebounded, some funding was restored, but funding is still below where it was a decade ago.

Jimmie Don warned his fellow Texans that it costs real money to meet the needs of students today but the legislature has not dealt with the realities.

Here are the realities:

“First, poverty makes educating students more difficult and more expensive. Second, lack of English language skills makes educating students more difficult and more expensive. Unfortunately, about 60 percent of Texas students fall into the poverty category. Almost one in five Texas students speaks limited English.

“We have also learned some things that work even in the most challenging circumstances. We know that if we attract, train and retain quality teachers there is a positive effect. We know that giving our best teachers incentives to teach on the most difficult campuses has a positive effect. We know that early childhood education — full day, high quality, Pre-K through 3rd grade — helps narrow the gaps for struggling students. Finally, it will require “wrap around services” including health care, nutrition and social services to make an impact on our harshest educational environments.

“Now the reality check: All of these things cost money. They also face the political perils of pulling sparse assets from mainstream students to more challenged students. If we truly believe that students in special education, limited English programs and in poverty really deserve to catch up, then funding must be part of the conversation.

“None of this happens in a vacuum. Other urgent needs from child protective services, foster child care, retired teacher health care, drug crisis interventions and on and on, all pull from state resources. To make matters even more complex, this is occurring during a fundamental shift in state policy. For some years, the state has been systematically cutting taxes and shifting the cost of services toward local taxpayers and local fees. Education is a prime example of this, the state share of education funding falling from 50 percent to 38 percent since 2008. If we really dislike property taxes, then we must have a discussion about what revenue stream we would prefer.

“As part of this new reality, our state faces several options. One is to simply live with a mediocre education system. After all, our students perform near the national average while our funding is far below the national average. Another option is to simply accept that we will have very high local school property taxes as the state pays less and less of the overall cost of public education. Or, hopefully, we can realistically face the need to enhance state revenue. That discussion is never politically easy.”

Clearly, he believes the time has come for the state to live up to the challenge. Under current leadership, that’s a Texas-sized challenge. Governor Greg Abbott and Lt. Governor Dan Patrick think that charters and vouchers can take the place of adequate funding. That’s ridiculous.

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding

Peter Greene: What Arne and Margaret Got Wrong About Education Reform: Everything

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2018 //
26

Peter Greene commented on the opinion piece written by Arne Duncan and Margaret Spellings about education reform, in which they lament the lack of courage and vision by those that succeeded them.

How sad, they write, that the bipartisan coalition that formed after the [phony] Nation at Risk report of 1983 is not fighting for more of the same.

How strange that they think of themselves as rebels when they were in charge and had the help of the nation’s billionaires.

How pathetic that they lament the lack of top-down muscle to shove more of the same down the throats of everyone else.

How curious that they don’t understand that the teachers marching in the streets are not supported their failed vision of more tests, higher punishments, and more privatization. What the protesters want more of investment in public schools, which neither Arne nor Margaret said much about when in office.

How out of touch these two are!

Categories Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, Funding, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top

A Guide to the Corporations Defunding Public Schools and Opposing Striking Teachers

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2018 //
20

THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ARTICLE YOU WILL READ TODAY. SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS, YOUR SCHOOL BOARD, YOUR LOCAL MEDIA, YOUR ELECTEDS. TWEET IT. POST IT ON FACEBOOK.

In the states where teachers have engaged in walkouts and strikes, public education has been systematically starved of funding. Typically, corporate taxes have been cut so that funding for education has also been cut. The corporations benefit while the children and their teachers are put on a starvation diet.

Who are the corporations and individuals behind the efforts to shrink funding for public schools and promote privatization?

This article makes it clear.

It begins like this, then details a state-by-state list of corporations and billionaires backing the cycle of austerity and school privatization.

“The ongoing wave of teacher strikes across the US is changing the conversation about public education in this country. From West Virginia to Arizona, Kentucky to Oklahoma, Colorado to North Carolina, tens of thousands of teachers have taken to the streets and filled state capitals, garnering public support and racking up victories in some of the nation’s most hostile political terrain.

“Even though the teachers who have gone on strike are paid well below the national average, their demands have gone beyond better salary and benefits for themselves. They have also struck for their students’ needs – to improve classroom quality and to increase classroom resources. Teachers are calling for greater investment in children and the country’s public education system as a whole. They are also demanding that corporations, banks, and billionaires pay their fair share to invest in schools.

“The teachers’ strikes also represent a major pushback by public sector workers against the right-wing agenda of austerity and privatization. The austerity and privatization agenda for education goes something like this: impose big tax cuts for corporations and the .01% and then use declining tax revenue as a rationale to cut funding for state-funded services like public schools. Because they are underfunded, public schools cannot provide the quality education kids deserve. Then, the right wing criticizes public schools and teachers, saying there is a crisis in education. Finally, the right wing uses this as an opportunity to make changes to the education system that benefit them – including offering privatization as a solution that solves the crisis of underfunding.

“While this cycle has put students, parents, and teachers in crisis, many corporations, banks, and billionaires are driving and profiting from it. The key forces driving the austerity and privatization agenda are similar across all the states that have seen strikes:

“*Billionaire school privatizers. A small web of billionaires – dominated by the Koch brothers and their donor network, as well as the Waltons – have given millions to state politicians who will push their pro-austerity, pro-school privatization agenda. These billionaires lead a coordinated, nationwide movement to apply business principles to education, including: promoting CEO-like superintendents, who have business experience but little or no education experience; closing “failing” schools, just as companies close unprofitable stores or factories; aggressively cutting costs, such as by recruiting less experienced teachers; instituting a market-based system in which public schools compete with privately managed charter schools, religious schools, for-profit schools, and virtual schools; and making standardized test scores the ultimate measure of student success.”

Keep reading to learn about the interlocking web that includes the Koch brothers, the Mercers, the Waltons, the fossil fuel industry, their think tanks, and much more, all combined to shrink public schools and replace them with charters and vouchers.

By the way, rightwing billionaire Philip Anschutz of Colorado was the producer of the anti-teacher, anti-public education, pro-charter propaganda film “Waiting for Superman.”

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Arizona, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Colorado, Corporate Reformers, Dark Money, Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Privatization, Teacher Pay, Walton Foundation, West Virginia

Justin Parmenter: Here Come the N.C. Teacher Thugs!

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2018 //
19

Justin Parmenter writes here about a state legislator in North Carolina who denounced the teachers who plan to protest on May 16 as “thugs.”

He says, here come the teacher thugs!

He writes:

Brody is right to be concerned about the more than 13,500 thugs who will be storming Raleigh on Wednesday. After all, these thugs bring a very special skill set that make us extraordinarily effective advocates:

We are black belts in sarcasm and penmanship. Just wait til you see our signs.

We can hold our pee all day long.

We reserve a special teacher voice that demands attention.

We are very good at waiting in line (no cutting).

We can go 8 hours without sitting down once. The secret is in the shoes.

Most importantly, these thugs are experts in fact-based arguments.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Categories Budget Cuts, Education Reform, Funding, North Carolina, Resistance, Teachers

Oakland: Financially Troubled District Lost $57.4 Million to Charters Last Year

By dianeravitch
May 13, 2018 //
19

The school district of Oakland, California, has been struggling to right its finances for years. One reason that it can’t right it’s Books is that charter schools are a drain in the district. Recently the district learned what the charters cost, by reading the report from “In the Public Interest.” The annual cost: $57.4 Million.

https://www.sfgate.com/education/article/Study-says-Oakland-school-district-lost-57-4-12898930.php

“Oakland has more charter schools per capita than any other district in California and has struggled to balance its budget in recent years, with schools forced to make $9 million in mid-year cuts this year.

“The report, called a first-of-its-kind analysis of such costs, also included net-loss analysis for East Side Union High School District in Santa Clara County and San Diego Unified.

“The high costs of charter schools have led to decreases in neighborhood public schools in counseling, libraries, music and art programs, lab sciences, field trips, reading tutors, special education funding, and even the most basic supplies like toilet paper,” said the researcher, political science Professor Gordon Lafer. “Unlimited charter school expansion is pushing some of California’s school districts toward a financial tipping point, from which they will be unable to return.”

Oakland may be an object lesson in the destructive effects of unlimited charter expansion. The continued financial drain may cause the school district to collapse.

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