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Andrea Gabor: School Reformers are Going Local, But….

By dianeravitch
September 6, 2018 //
30

Andrea Gabor, author of Education After the Culture Wars, believes that the latest Gates grant for “networks” is evidence that corporate reformers have decided to “go local” instead of funding big national plans like the Common Core.

“For two decades, the prevailing wisdom among education philanthropists and policymakers has been that the U.S. school system needs the guiding hand of centralized standard-setting to discipline ineffective teachers and bureaucrats. Much of that direction was guided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has spent billions since 2000 to influence both schools and education policy.

“But as schools open this year, top-down national initiatives based on standardized testing and curricular uniformity are in retreat.

“Last fall, the Gates Foundation ended its support for a $575 million, six-year teacher-effectiveness project; the initiative had failed to meet the foundation’s goals to “dramatically improve student outcomes,” according to a recent study commissioned by the foundation.

“Two dozen states started backing away from the Gates-backed Common Core State Standards not long after they were first embraced in 2010 (though many of these states retained “key elements” of the standards, according to a 2017 report by an education organization the foundation helps fund.) Earlier, the foundation acknowledged that “many of the small schools” that it invested in — the foundation’s first major education initiative — “did not improve students’ achievement in any significant way.”

“Now, the foundation seems to be stepping back from sweeping national initiatives in its bid to remake education. In the coming years, its K-12 philanthropy will concentrate on supporting what it calls “locally driven solutions” that originate among networks of 20 to 40 schools, according to Allan Golston, who leads the foundation’s U.S. operations, because they have “the power to improve outcomes for black, Latino, and low-income students and drive social and economic mobility.”

She believes this represents a significant shift from the top down mandates of No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and similar efforts cheered on by Gates and other titans.

I am not so sure.

The Gates grant of $92 Million for “networks” is chump change. It’s amorphous.

Besides, Gates is still funding Common Core, despite its failure to fulfill any of the bold promises made on its behalf eight years ago.

Worse, as Gabor notes, Gates and Arnold and other malefactors of great wealth are funding another “go local” project called City Fund, which draws together the leaders of privatization to plant charter schools in many cities. “Going local” in this case means trying to fly below the radar to push privatization in many places, whether the local people want it or not. Eli Broad has “gone local” by buying control of the Los Angeles school board (that is, until the swing vote was convicted and removed from the board. But he won’t give up.) Betsy DeVos went local by buying the state of Michigan. Jeb Bush engineered the hostile takeover of education policy in Florida. DFER long ago went local by bundling campaign contributions for state and local candidates who support charter schools and high-stakes testing.

Going local may be more insidious than pushing a noxious national agenda, which, in the Trump era, brings resistance to a boil.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Common Core, Disruption, Education Industry, Funding, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization

Carol Burris: New Orleans Was No Miracle, and It is No Model for School Reform

By dianeravitch
September 5, 2018 //
24

Corporate reformers have touted the New Orleans “transformation” as proof that privatization works. The recipe is simple: First, get a natural disaster to wipe out all the public schools. Then, fire all the unionized teachers and replace them with inexperienced, low-wage teachers willing to work long hours. At the same time, replace the public schools with privately managed charter schools. Let everyone choose. And, eventually, great things happen: test scores go up, graduation rates go up, college admission rates rise, college persistence goes up. All these great things happen by the miracle of privatization.

As Carol Burris explains in this important article, the narrative is all wrong.

Before Hurricane Katrina, there were 65,000 students in the schools of New Orleans. Today, there are about 45,000. The hurricane did the most damage to the low-lying areas where very poor people lived, and some of them never returned.

In mid-July, Douglas Harris and Matthew Larsen wrote a paper about the great success of the reforms in New Orleans. There are many caveats, mostly having to do with the causes of improvements. And, as Valerie Strauss points out in her introduction to Burris’s article, the New Orleans school district is still significantly below the state average on the state tests.

Burris notes that even Douglas Harris is cautious about whether the New Orleans reforms are “scalable.” Funding increased by almost $1,400 per pupil. That mattered, though Harris doesn’t know how much it mattered. Second, Harris warns that the situation in New Orleans was unique and that its reforms cannot be extrapolated to other districts that might want to adopt the portfolio model or otherwise expand charters. “New Orleans,” he said, “was uniquely situated for these reforms to work. The district was extremely low-performing, and pretty much everyone agreed that some type of major change was in order. It’s easier to improve from such a low starting point. … I don’t think we can extrapolate New Orleans to most of the country. It’s more like a best-case scenario.”

Burris reports that the Network for Public Education commissioned Bruce Baker of Rutgers University to review the Harris-Larsen report on NOLA.

The Baker report is here.

Baker faults Harris and Larsen for downplaying the role of extra funding and the importance of demographic change.

Baker reviews the effects of adding substantial new resources to a struggling district. He points out that in the case of New Orleans, a disproportionate share of the new funding went to administration and transportation. Because the teaching staff was young and inexperienced, the cost of instruction was unusually low and is probably not sustainable in the long run.

He also points out the dramatic decline of concentrated poverty in New Orleans. This in itself was an important “reform” which helped to boost outcomes.

As usual, things are more complicated than they seem. Any reformer who blithely suggests applying the New Orleans model to a city without a hurricane, without a huge boost in funding, and without positive demographic changes to reduce poverty, is likely to be disappointed.

Categories Funding, New Orleans, Poverty

Arizona: Governor Ducey Packed the State Supreme Court to Block #RedForEd Funding (and Broke His Promise)

By dianeravitch
September 5, 2018 //
8

Governor Doug Ducey added two new members to the Arizona Supreme Court to ensure that the court would strike down an effort to raise the state income tax off the ballot in November. Last week, the court dutifully complied.

This was a slap in the face to the #RedForEd movement, which campaigned for increased funding. It raises the stakes in the Governor’s Race this November, when Ducey will face the Democratic nominee, educator David Garcia.

“The measure, recently titled Proposition 207, was expected to bring in $690 million in additional funding for Arizona public district and charter schools.

“Supporters had framed Prop. 207 as a way to fully restore the more than $1 billion in cuts to education funding since the recession.

“Prop. 207 would have raised income-tax rates by 3.46 percentage points to 8 percent on individuals who earn more than $250,000 or households that earn more than $500,000. It also would have raised individual rates by 4.46 percentage points to 9 percent for individuals who earn more than $500,000 and households that earn more than $1 million.”

The increase in taxes was opposed by the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and a group deceptively called “Arizonans for Great Schools and a Strong Economy.” Yeah, great schools with bare bones funding.

The opponents claimed that the referendum misstated the tax increase. Instead of saying that taxes would go up “by 4.46 percentage points to 9 percent,” they wanted the referendum to characterize the increase in the worst possible light:

“The complaint alleged the petitions were misleading because they referred to the proposed tax-rate increase as a “percent” increase and not the more accurate “percentage point” increase. According to the complaint, the tax rate would have seen a 76 and 98 percent increase and not a 3.46 and 4.46 percent increase.”

Supporters of the tax increase had collected 270,000 signatures.

“Supporters of Prop. 207 immediately placed blame for the measure’s defeat on Ducey, who is running for re-election.

“David Garcia, the Democratic nominee for governor, on Wednesday said Ducey had “stacked” the state’s highest court, leading it to shoot down Prop. 207.

“Ducey has appointed three of the seven judges who sit on the court’s bench. The governor also signed legislation in 2016 that expanded the court from five justices to seven.

“The stakes for the race for governor in Arizona just changed utterly and irrevocably,” Garcia said. “We must elect pro-public education candidates up and down the ballot to prevent this kind of corruption in the future. I’m proud to stand with our educators, parents and kids.”

“The Ducey campaign did not immediately comment on Wednesday’s court ruling. A spokesman for Ducey said Wednesday evening that the governor was still reviewing the five-paragraph ruling.”

Obviously, Governor Ducey reads slowly. He is still digesting the five paragraph ruling.

Jan Resseger has an excellent analysis of the slapdown of the AZ funding measure, which was supposed to be the means for Ducey to keep his promise to raise teachers’ salaries 20% by 2020.

She writes:

“In May, after Arizona teachers walked out of school and flooded the capitol, the legislature passed a budget to give the teachers the first installment in what Governor Doug Ducey promises will be a 20 percent pay raise by 2020. Wanting to ensure there will be a second installment of that promised raise, however, and worrying about catastrophic cuts in state expenditures on other necessities at their schools, organized teachers gathered thousands more signatures than were required to put an Invest in Ed initiative on the November ballot to raise taxes on families making over $250,000 annually, with the money designated for public education.

“The teachers secured the signatures before the deadline, but the Chamber of Commerce filed a lawsuit to block the referendum—alleging that the ballot language was not clear enough. A trial court okayed the ballot language, and on August 16, an appeals court affirmed that the initiative could go forward. However, last week, siding with the Chamber of Commerce, the Arizona Supreme Court yanked the referendum off the ballot.

“Here are some facts to explain why the tax increase was so desperately needed in Arizona, and why the Arizona Supreme Court’s decision to block the initiative is such a serious matter.

“The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ Michael Leachman describes Arizona’s desperate revenue shortage, the product of years of tax cuts: “At least 12 states have cut ‘general’ or ‘formula’ (school) funding—the primary form of state support for elementary and secondary schools—by 7 percent or more per student since 2008…. Seven of these states have also cut income taxes over the decade, making it particularly hard for them to raise revenue needed for their schools.” Arizona is one of the seven.

“In a recent report, ‘A Decade of Neglect’,: the American Federation of Teachers describes what the tax cuts have meant for Arizona’s schools: “In the years following the Great Recession, the Arizona Legislature cut funding for K-12 schools by $4.6 billion…. For 2015-16, Arizona ranked 49th among the states and the District of Columbia for per-pupil funding. Spending was down 12.7 percent compared with 2007-2008, and only two other states saw a larger decline in per-pupil spending between 2008 and 2016. The state ranks 46th for teacher salaries… After a 15 percent decline in the student-teacher ratio, Arizona ranks 50th among the states… Arizona also ranks near the bottom for support for higher education. For FY 2017, spending was 55 percent below pre-recession levels, and the state ranked last for spending on higher education. No other state showed a larger decline in post-recession support for higher education. Arizona’s failure to fund education is the result of what has been described as an ‘ideological aversion to taxes.’”

Arizona’s teachers trusted Ducey to keep his promise. He won’t. If he is re-elected, he will forget he ever promised to raise salaries.

Categories Arizona, Funding

New Hampshire: How to Get More Spending, Higher Taxes, Less Opportunity

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2018 //
4

Tom Loughman writes here about the harmful impact of vouchers, which were recently defeated by a slim margin in the state legislature.

He writes:

“When I was a little boy, we lost my father to cancer. Not long after, my family lost everything else too and we struggled to make ends meet. We were always thinking about getting through the week and end of the month. But for all its challenges, my childhood taught me empathy, grit, and drive; drive to make a better life for myself. I knew I only needed the opportunity.

“That opportunity came in the form of a public education. The one thing we never had to worry about was whether I would get a great education and a hot lunch at school. I made the most it and have made a better life for my family.

“As a parent now, I followed closely the efforts of New Hampshire Republicans to pass Senate Bill 193, which would establish one of the most comprehensive school voucher programs in the country. It would siphon money from our public schools and divert them to private, religious and home schools.

“Fiscally responsible constituents would be alarmed at the financial implications of the school voucher bill. According to the legislative staff, it would have siphoned off $100 million over the first 11 years from public schools to send 2,000 children to private, religious and home schools. As expensive as that is, Sen. Dan Innis voted for a far more sweeping version twice, which would more than double those costs.

“You can imagine the impact: a reduction in public school quality and big increase in local property taxes. Despite all that spending to privatize more of our education system, there is no anticipated improvement in achievement. According to studies like the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education, private schools were not better than public in producing higher achievement.

“The bottom line is that the school voucher bill significantly increases the costs of education in New Hampshire and puts the burden on local property taxpayers. Don’t take my word for it; take Republican fiscal hawk and House Finance Chairman Neil Kurk’s who said, “this bill downshifts $99 million to local property tax payers in ways that they will not be able to avoid by reducing expenses. I was not elected to downshift money on my constituents.” A few Republicans stood with him and House Democrats to defeat the bill by a slim margin. Fiscal responsibility prevailed.

“Sen. Innis and his colleagues have pledged to try again. Innis said in a recent op-ed that he believes in school choice for all New Hampshire children. However, the vouchers would not cover the full cost of private school tuitions. Therefore, the only families that can take advantage of these vouchers and attend private schools would be people who can afford a few thousand dollars difference between the voucher and tuition.

“The results of this voucher bill are entirely predictable. Children from families who can afford private education could pay less by applying a voucher to their tuition bill. Children from families who cannot afford to pay thousands will remain in public schools that would now face budget shortfalls. It’s actually even worse because private schools can deny admissions to students with disabilities, excluding them entirely from the “choices” vouchers give their fellow students. That makes education opportunity less equal.

“These reverse Robin Hood policies of taking resources and opportunities from lower income families to give to wealthier ones is a non-starter. The high costs of living on the Seacoast are already impacting our seniors, working families and small businesses. New Hampshire Republicans should stop pushing a radical bill that would significantly increase our spending, raise property taxes, and hurt our public schools.

“We are proud of our public schools. On the Seacoast, they are without a doubt, one of the best draws we have to attracting working families to live and work here. I believe Sen. Innis’ support for defunding them and prompting tax increases is an untenable position to hold as our senator. It does not reflect our values or interests.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding, New Hampshire, School Choice

New Study: Spending More Improves Student Achievement

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2018 //
30

That headline is like saying, “Flash! Water is Wet!”

Yet there are many elected officials who disparage that money matters. They say thatclass size doesn’t matter. They ignore real world problems of staffing schools and teaching kids with widely varying needs.

A new study finds that spending more does matter. When affluent parents spend large sums to send their children to a private school or to live in an expensive neighborhood, they are paying for small classes, well-maintained facilities, and a stable, experienced teaching staff.

We are unwilling to pay the price to provide similar resources to all children, even when we know that it matters.

Categories Education Reform, Funding

Arizona: Court Kicks Education Funding Measure Off November Ballot

By dianeravitch
August 30, 2018 //
13

Supporters of education had hoped to get a referendum on the ballot to raise taxes on high earners to generate a guaranteed revenue stream of funding for the schools.

But the Arizona Supreme Court kicked the measure off the ballot.


PHOENIX — Arizonans will not get a chance to decide whether to hike taxes on the rich to generate more money for education.

In a brief order Wednesday, the Arizona Supreme Court said petition signers were not informed that the measure would do more than increase the tax rate on those earning more than $250,000 a year. It also would eliminate the indexing of income tax brackets to account for inflation.

Chief Justice Scott Bales, writing for the court, said a majority concluded that omission “creates a significant danger of confusion or unfairness.”

The ruling is a significant setback for the education community, and not just because it means there will not be a dedicated revenue stream for public education. There were hopes that having this measure on the ballot, coupled with a referendum already on the ballot over expansion of vouchers, would bring out voters who also would support candidates willing to put more money into public schools.

There was no immediate comment from supporters of the Invest in Ed initiative, including the Arizona Education Association.

Wednesday’s ruling is a victory for the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry which led and financed the legal fight to block a public vote.

Organization president Glenn Hamer argued that hiking income taxes on the wealthiest Arizonans “would just create a drag on the state’s overall economy.” And he said that if the state targets the rich, many would just choose to move elsewhere.

That question is now academic.

There is no dispute that the main provision of the measure would have imposed an 8 percent state income tax on earnings of more than $250,000 for individuals and $500,000 for couples. That compares with the current 4.54 percent rate.

And there would be a 9 percent tax rate on anything over $500,000 for individuals and $1 million for married couples filing jointly.

Proponents estimated that the additional revenues would generate about $690 million a year for public education.

Categories Arizona, Education Reform, Funding

Texas: Time to Pay the Bill for Special Education

By dianeravitch
August 27, 2018 //
20

An editorial in the Houston Chronicle brings up to date the story of Texas’ failure to pay the cost of educating students with disabilities.

“Imagine being a teacher and told not to bother trying to help a child who is having difficulty learning. That was happening routinely in Texas public schools before the legislature was shamed into eliminating an 8.5 percent cap the state had placed on special education enrollment.

“The federal Department of Education in January told the Texas Education Agency that the “target” it first imposed in 2004 violated federal laws requiring schools to serve all students. The cap wasn’t just illegal, it was morally reprehensible and shortsighted.

“The cap limited the aspirations of students with learning disabilities who didn’t get the help they needed, and shortchanged the state’s future by inadequately educating thousands of its children.

“The cap’s impact was reported last year in the Chronicle’s investigative series “Denied,” which pointed out that Houston had imposed an even more draconian 8 percent target for special education enrollment. “It became a nightmare,” said Attucks Middle School teacher Thomas Iocca.

“It’s a nightmare that won’t end any time soon for students who lost precious years of federally mandated assistance and interventions that could have helped them learn.”

Meanwhile, lawmakers are left with a fiscal headache as they try to find an additional $3.2 billion to spend on special education over the next three years to serve students previously denied assistance. Removing the cap is expected to add 189,000 special education students to public school rolls statewide.

Maybe the state should tap the nearly $11 billion Rainy Day Fund it’s been sitting on. Other issues need more cash too, including unpaid bills from Hurricane Harvey, Medicaid and an underfunded employee pension fund. But special education must be a top priority.

Categories Education Reform, Funding, Special Education, Texas

Oakland Parent to EWA: Charters Are Killing Our Public Schools

By dianeravitch
August 27, 2018 //
12

Recently the Education Writers Association Blog posted a “debate” between distinguished economist Helen Ladd of Duke University and charter advocate Robin Lake of the Center for Reinventing Public Education about whether charter schools were harming public schools financially. Ladd had completed a study of the amount of money that districts in North Carolina had lost to charter schools. Gates-funded CPRE exists to sell charters and portfolio districts.

Jane Nylund, an Oakland public school parent, sent the following comment to the EWA:

“As a supporter of public schools, and as a parent who has experienced firsthand the financial damage done to portfolio districts like ours in Oakland, it is disappointing but not surprising to see how the authors of this debate on financial impact to districts fail or simply ignore the fact that charter and district populations are different.

“Clearly, this debate was framed around the myth that charters do more with less, when in fact, they do less with less. District school students cost more because of higher levels of special education (which CRPE conveniently leaves out), as well as higher ELL and FRPL in many cases. District schools also provide food, transportation, after-school programs, and enrichment programs such as art, music, and sports. District schools also value wraparound services such as health clinics, on-site nursing care, psychologists, and counselors. Charter schools aren’t required to provide any of this, nor are they required to have experienced teachers to educate the neediest kids.

“So in summary, charters take the cheapest kids to educate, and then unfairly compare the cost to districts which provide many important services for ALL kids. Anecdotally, the $57M that our district has lost to the 40+ charters that have opened here has impacted our district to the point where they have decided to eliminate 50% of our sports programs that serve our district children.

“There is no debate, here. That is a fact. Please do your research next time and use a different source than CRPE if you still feel the need to “debate” the financial impact of all this disruption. CRPE is front and center of the privatization movement that has caused so much financial misery in Oakland. “Nimble” is code for school closures and teacher layoffs, so that more unaccountable charters can have our district buildings. “Sticky costs” is code for experienced teachers, which CRPE wants to classify as variable costs ala Milton Friedman.

“CRPE would like nothing more than to see “nimble” districts hire and fire cheap teaching labor at will; helps get rid of those “sticky costs”, and also to close down our schools to keep us nice and “nimble”. Going forward, impress us with a well-balanced debate complete with complete, accurate, well-documented, unbiased information. That’s a lot to ask, isn’t it?”

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Funding, Oakland

Biased Reporting from the Education Writers Association Blog

By dianeravitch
August 22, 2018 //
32

I was astonished to read a post on the EWA blog today about whether charter schools reduce the funding available to public schools.

https://www.ewa.org/blog-educated-reporter/how-much-do-charter-schools-cost-districts?utm_source=salsa&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter

“There’s no question that the growth of charter schools presents significant financial challenges for many school systems, especially in cities where they serve a large share of students. Where researchers disagree is how great the costs to districts are, and to what extent charter schools are to blame.”

The author posed the question as a “debate” between the distinguished economist Helen Ladd of Duke University—whose bio is star studded with degrees and honors—and Robin Lake, who is an advocate for the charter industry at the pro-charter Center for the Reinvention of Public Education. Ladd is a scholar. Lake is not.

And yet they are treated as equals by this shoddy reporting.

The writer didn’t bother to contact scholar Gordon Lafer, author of the “One Percent Solution” and of a recent study demonstrating that charters diverted tens of millions of dollars from public schools in three urban districts in California.

Report: The Cost of Charter Schools for Public School Districts

When school districts cut their budgets because of charter schools, they must lay off teachers and cut programs. That affects the education of the vast majority of students. Why is that a debatable issue?

I googled the author, David Loewenberg, and saw that he was TFA and the New America Foundation (funded largely by Google), and it made sense.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Privatization

Arizona: #RedForEd Gets “Tax the Rich” for Education on the Ballot

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2018 //
7

The #RedForEd movement in Arizona succeeded in getting an initiative on the Arizona ballot to tax the highest income people to pay for education. Arizona is one of the lowest-spending states in the nation for education.

A judge has slapped down efforts by the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry to block people from voting whether to hike income taxes on the rich to generate $690 million a year for education.

In an extensive ruling Thursday, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge James Smith acknowledged that, strictly speaking, hiking the top income tax rate from 4.54 percent to 8 percent for those earning more than $250,000 a year actually increases the tax rate on those earnings by 76 percent. Similarly, taking the tax rate for earnings above $500,000 for individuals to 9 percent is a 98 percent increase over the current rate.

But Smith said that did not make it inherently misleading for organizers of the Invest in Ed initiative to describe the tax hikes as 3.46 percent and 4.46 percent, the absolute difference between the current rate and the proposed new ones.

It is true, Smith said, that technically speaking, the 100-word description of the key provisions of the measure, required by state law, should probably have said it was raising the tax rate by 3.46 and 4.46 “percentage points,” respectively.

“While that likely would be more precise, the existing summaries are not fatally misleading without that verbiage,” the judge wrote, meaning the use of the smaller numbers is not enough to block a vote.

Attorneys for the chamber had argued the use of 3.46 and 4.46 percent was misleading, causing some people to sign the petition to put the issue on the November ballot who would have balked at a measure described as hiking tax rates by 76 and 98 percent, even just for the rich.

Smith conceded that initiative organizers crafted the description “undoubtedly … to appeal to potential voters.” But he said that does not make it inaccurate or misleading.

Anyway, the judge pointed out that the full text of the initiative — including the current and proposed tax rates — were attached to the petitions, so those who might have been confused could check for themselves before signing.

Categories Arizona, Funding
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