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Illinois: Join the Protest at Gov. Rauner’s Home!

By dianeravitch
August 1, 2017 //
10

MEDIA ALERT: Wednesday, August 2, 2017

“SB1 IS NOT A CPS BAILOUT!”
CPS Parents and Students Cry Foul on Rauner’s False Rhetoric and SB1 Veto

Protesters Descend on Gov’s Neighborhood with $6.9 Billion Collection Notice

WHAT: CPS parents and students respond to Governor Rauner’s veto of SB1

WHERE: Governor Rauner’s block: 720 Rosewood Ave, Winnetka, IL

DATE: Wednesday, August 2, 2017

TIME: 10:00 am start

Chicago Public School (CPS) parents and students will gather at Governor Rauner’s house to reject his veto of SB1 and to present a collection notice to him for $6.9 Billion in unpaid pension payments to CPS.

Parents and students will bring attention to Governor Rauner’s false statement that SB1 is a Chicago ‘bailout,’ by pointing out that the state has for years failed to pay billions in dollars due to Chicago for pension support.

Raise Your Hand Action (RYHA) has determined that the state failed to pay at least $6.9B in payments to Chicago Public Schools that they intended to pay according to statute 40 ILCS 5/17-127, item B. Under this standard, and according to information from TRS’ annual reports, the state should have paid a total of between $6.9B and $10.3B to CPS for pensions since 1995.

The group will also canvass in the Governor’s neighborhood, sharing facts about the lack of pension parity for CPS, which contributes greatly to the plight of Chicago children, who attend one of the most financially-disadvantaged districts in the country, just miles from some of the most well-funded schools in the US, those in Rauner’s hometown.

Chicago is not asking for additional taxes or extra money, just its fair share of what the state already allocates to schools. SB1 was designed using recommendations from Rauner’s hand-picked panel to do just that.

The Better Government Association (BGA) conducted an analysis this week and found Governor Rauner’s claim regarding the pension ‘bailout’ language to be false because “it [SB1] only gives CPS what every other school district already has.” It now seems that Rauner would rather demonize CPS than see schools open on time or provide the fair resource allocation that will give kids a chance.

Back of the Yards College Prep High School student Veronica Rodriguez says, “To stop the rise in violence in our communities, we need investment in our schools. We need counselors, teachers and afterschool programs. I need the governor to stop playing politics with my future.”

Categories Accountability, Chicago, Education Reform, Funding

Mike Klonsky: Governor Rauner Vetoes Funding for the Kids of Chicago

By dianeravitch
August 1, 2017 //
9

Mike Klonsky describes Governor Rauner’s rationale for vetoing aid to Chicago public schools.

“Gov. Rauner has vetoed SB1, the school funding bill, thereby continuing to deprive the state’s neediest districts of millions of dollars and threatening the opening of schools in the fall.

“Rauner claims that the bill takes money away from wealthier white districts in order to “bail out” needier, mainly black and Latino districts like Chicago. He also claims, the bill, “includes a bailout of Chicago’s broken teacher pension system.”

“Both claims are false, says the BGA.

“In fact, under the new funding formula no school district gets less state money, but many low-income districts get more. With low-income students accounting for 80.2% of its enrollment, CPS is among the latter group.

“The biggest problem with the bill as I see it, is that it fails to identify new sources of revenue, ie. a graduated income tax, making the wealthiest pay their fair share. But nevertheless, the bill, which passed both houses in Springfield needs to be signed, and fast.

“Rauner’s been using the big-lie technique to play off white students against students of color, urban schools against downstate and suburban schools and everyone against teachers, their unions, and retirees.

“But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that his “bail out” claims are correct. What’s wrong with bailing out public schools or other public institutions in distress? If IL paid its fair share of education dollars, a bail out wouldn’t be necessary. IL continues to rank near the bottom when it comes to school funding.

“The state, by constitutional mandate, has the primary responsibility for funding its public schools but has never come close to covering even 50% of the cost. In recent years, the state’s contribution has dipped below 30%, forcing local school districts to raise their property tax levy or cut programs.”

Another example of a state that has decided to starve its public school and evade its state constitutional responsibility.

Categories Funding, Illinois

BREAKING NEWS: Illinois Governor Rauner Vetoes School Funding Plan

By dianeravitch
August 1, 2017 //
16

Governor Bruce Rauner vetoed an education funding bill because there was too much money for Chicago.

Rauner vetoes education funding plan, rewriting Democrats’ proposal
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-bruce-rauner-education-met-0802-20170801-story.html

Rauner, a billionaire hedge fund manager, loves charter schools, hates public schools. He especially hates Chicago public schools because the union fought him and continues to fight him.

Categories Funding, Illinois

Jersey Jazzman: The Secrets of Successful Charter Schools (Extra Money and Shedding Students)

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2017 //
33

This is second in Mark Weber’s two-part series about an amazing charter school in Philadelphia.

He reveals its secrets: it gets more funding than public schools. It chooses its students with care. It loses students who can’t make the grade. A sure-fire formula for student success!

He writes:

“A follow-up to yesterday’s post:

“As I noted, NBC’s Sunday Night with Megan Kelly broadcast a story earlier this month about Boys Latin Charter School, a “successful” charter school in Philadelphia which claims to have ten times the college completion rate of its neighboring high schools.

“To his credit, reporter Craig Melvin didn’t swallow the claims of the school whole, and pushed back on the idea that Boys Latin serves an equivalent student population to those surrounding high schools. But he did miss two important points:

“First, and as I documented in the last post, Boys Latin raises funds outside of the monies it collects from public sources. The amounts add up to thousands of dollars per pupil per year.

“As Bruce Baker notes in this (somewhat snarky) post, you really can’t make a comparison between two schools and call one “successful” without taking into account the differences in resources available to both. Philadelphia’s public school district has been chronically underfunded for years. It’s hardly fair for Boys Latin to collect millions in extra revenue, then brag about their college persistence rate compared to schools that don’t have enough funding to provide an adequate education.

“But there’s another issue Melvin missed — an issue that Boys Latin’s founder, David Hardy, has been refreshingly candid about in the past:

Hypothetically speaking, say a charter school is authorized to serve up to 500 students, but, for whatever reason, 50 students leave through the course of a school year. A charter that “backfills” will enroll the next 50 kids on its wait list as space becomes available.

Other schools will replace those empty spots at the beginning of the next school year, including filling seats in the upper grades.

Charters that don’t do this will watch their total enrollment in a grade dwindle year by year — retaining only the students tenacious enough to persist.

In contrast, district-run neighborhood schools and renaissance charters must enroll all students living within a prescribed catchment zone, no matter what time of year or grade, when they show up asking for a seat.

At first glance this difference may seem a subtle nuance, but Philadelphia educators say the policy difference tremendously affects school culture and performance.

[…]

David Hardy, CEO of Boys’ Latin, subscribes to the same theory. He oversees a rigorous admissions process that begins well before the school year.

Boys’ Latin asks prospective ninth-graders to submit letters of intent in November, nearly a year before they would enroll. Staff then interview students and parents to ensure that they understand the school’s rigor — classes run until 5 p.m., students must learn Latin, wear a uniform, and adhere to a strict code of conduct.

Those who commit attend a month-long freshman academy in July before the school-year-proper begins.
By September, he said, the kids are all on the same page.

“You introduce new people into that, and it can kind of mess up the environment,” said Hardy.

“This is an issue that comes up over and over again in charter school research: student cohort attrition. As a cohort of students (Class of “x”) moves from freshman to sophomore to junior to senior year, it may lose students. Sometimes students drop out; sometimes they move. If a charter school “backfills,” they then replace the students who left with new students who come into the school in later years.

“Many charters have high student cohort attrition rates, meaning students leave the school before graduation — often returning to the public, district schools, which must take them no matter when they arrive at the schoolhouse door. These same charters don’t backfill, so their cohort sizes shrink as they move toward their senior years.”

You too can create a miracle school. Pick your students carefully; create a few hurdles to winnow out the slackers; bid farewell to those who can’t keep up; get some deep-pocketed funders.

Simple. A miracle!

Categories Charter Schools, Funding, Privatization

Jersey Jazzman: The Summer of Choice Love

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2017 //
7

Jersey Jazzman, aka teacher Mark Weber, reviews the blossoming of choice-choice-choice this summer.

Behind it, he says, is a failure of honesty and will.

In recent weeks, we have been besieged with testimonials and heartening stories about choice.

“The clever thing about this construction is that anyone who challenges the narrative is immediately put on the defensive: Why are you against helping people get a better education? Why don’t you care about these children? It must be that you care about your own interests more than theirs…

“There is little evidence that the fraction of “choice” schools that appear to get better results do so because they are “innovative” in their educational practices. But the “choice” schools that do get gains all seem to have structural advantages, starting with resource advantages — gained through a variety of strategies — that allow them to offer things like longer days, longer years, smaller student:staff ratios, and extended educational programming.

“By all appearances, we seem to be able to adequately fund our schools in the affluent, leafy ‘burbs, even as we shrug our shoulders at the prospect of doing the same for urban centers enrolling many students who are in economic disadvantage. Millburn has what it needs; Newark does not. Gross Point has plenty; Detroit doesn’t. New Trier is fine; Chicago is not. Lower Merion thrives; Philadelphia withers.

“It’s a story that plays out across the nation. Somehow these affluent communities manage to scrape together enough to provide adequate educations for their children, even when burdened with unionized teachers and step contracts and democratically elected school boards. Somehow they manage to get their schools what they need without giving up transparency and governmental accountability and agency for all of their citizens through the democratic process.

“School “choice” is the result of a failure of honesty and will.

“The failure of honesty comes from failing to fully acknowledge that structural inequities — inequality, chronic poverty, racism, inadequate school funding — lead to unequal educational outcomes. It also comes from failing to acknowledge that the advantages a select few “choice” schools have accrued to themselves are directly responsible for their outcome gains.

“The failure of will results from a failure to act collectively in ways that would move adequate resources to all schools where they are lacking, without giving up democratic governmental control.

“Neither Kristof nor Lemmon nor Hardy nor anyone else has given us any reason to believe that the only way to get more resources into schools that need them is to abandon governmental control. There is, however, plenty of reason to believe shifting school control to private entities will reduce transparency, student and family rights, and efficiency — both here and abroad.

“When children live lives free of want and attend well-resourced, government-controlled schools they do very well. Certainly, there are problems and room for improvement. But communities don’t need to give up control of their schools if the pre-conditions for success are in place.

“Instead of upending the entire system, why don’t we try that?”

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, International, Philadelphia, Privatization, School Choice

Texas: Fort Bend ISD Tells State Leaders: Stop Starving Our Public Schools!

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2017 //
22

Texas Governor Greg Abbott called a special session of the legislature to try once again to ram through vouchers, a proposal that has been repeatedly rejected by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. The State Senate is led by the voucher zealot and former talk-show host Dan Patrick; the House has responsible leadership that actually wants to help the public schools that enroll some five million children, who are the future of Texas. Every time the Senate endorses vouchers, the House blocks them. The House has proposed a budget increase to help public schools, but the Senate holds the budget proposal hostage to vouchers. Meanwhile, the public schools are hurting.

The Fort Bend Independent School District addressed the state’s leaders and lawmakers and said: Stop starving our public schools! The school board adopted a series of resolutions calling on legislators to improve school funding for public schools.


The resolutions criticize vouchers as a way of taking money away from cash-strapped districts, lambaste a proposal to require districts to provide teacher raises without funding them and urge lawmakers to pass school finance reform in order to increase the amount that districts receive in state funding.

Kristin Tassin, the board’s president, accused state leaders of taking money away from public schools to promote their political agendas.

“Our state leaders are claiming to support Texas teachers and students, but they are being disingenuous,” Tassin said.

In Gov. Greg Abbott’s call for a special session, he proposed giving a $1,000 pay raise to all teachers, offering vouchers for special education students, forming a committee to study school-finance reform and allowing districts to have more flexibility in teacher hiring…

Vouchers have long been a touchy subject in Texas and nationwide. Essentially, vouchers allow parents to take money that the state would have spent educating their child in a public school and use it to offset the cost of tuition at private schools. While proponents of vouchers argue that they’re an innovative way to allow economically disadvantaged and special education students access to better educations, opponents say vouchers drain money from public schools and direct the funds to private schools that are not held to the same testing and accountability standards…

Tassin said many districts, including Fort Bend ISD, have already voted to approve pay raises for the coming school year and argue that mandating unfunded raises will further strain the district’s finances. Pay raises for teachers and employees have traditionally been considered a local matter.

Keep up the pressure from the grassroots. Vote only for legislators who support public schools, not those who want to take money from public schools that are already underfunded.

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding, Texas, Vouchers

ALEC’s Hilarious Report Card on The States

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2017 //
26

ALEC is the fringe-right American Legislative Exchange Council, which advocates for school privatization and elimination of unions, due process, and the teaching profession. Its hero is Betsy DeVos, who is working daily to bring ALEC’s extremist agenda into the mainstream.

ALEC publishes an annual report card on education, evaluating the states not by test scores or quality of education or results, but by the degree to which they have privatized their public schools and diverted funding to nonpublic schools.

The world according to ALEC is upside down.

The number 1 state is Arizona, even though it has low scores on NAEP and a very low high school graduation rate.

The number 2 is Florida, also with an abysmal graduation rate.

Number 3 is Indiana, where privatization reigns supreme, and spending is low.

The District of Columbia, one of the lowest performing districts in the nation, with the biggest achievement gaps, ranks number 6.

Far behind D.C. and other contenders is Massachusetts, with the nation’s highest test scores and a graduation rate of 89%.

Why, according to ALEC, the state of Alabama and the District of Columbia are far, far better than Massachusetts.

And even funnier, ALEC says the worst state in the nation is Nebraska. It has no charter schools, no vouchers. It has a graduation rate of 94%. Just awful!

The ALEC report card is the direct opposite of the Network for Public Education report card, which graded states in relation to their support for public schools. ALEC’s #1 state, Arizona, received an F. ALEC’s #51 state, Nebraska, came in second in the nation.

What a hoot!

Categories ALEC, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization

Jeff Bryant: How Are Public School Parents Like Criminals?

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2017 //
32

Jeff Bryant is doing an article about the St. Louis public schools. As he has delved into the issues, he learned how the state of Missouri has underfunded the schools for years. And he learned something more. The city is gentrifying. It wants young childless couples. Parents of school age children are a burden to the budget.

“As a local St. Louis reporter tells it, during a public meeting about a proposed new $130 million 34-story apartment building in the city, alderman Joe Roddy used a slideshow to make a case for why the city should give the developers 15 years of reduced property taxes, a $10 million subsidy, in exchange for some additional retail space and 305 high-end, luxury apartments downtown.

“In a slide show titled “How the City Makes & Spends Money,” Roddy, a Democrat mind you, laid out a hierarchy of those who “make money” for the city at the top and those who cause the city to “spend money” at the bottom. At the top of his slide were businesses. In the middle were residents with no children and retirees. And at the very bottom – in the tier of city dwellers who place the biggest financial burden on government – were “criminals and residents with children in public school.”

“When told that some might take offense at equating families with children needing free public schools to criminals, Roddy countered that the project would “target tenants who are young professionals without children. Attracting that demographic to the city is crucial, he says, and after the tax abatement ends, the revenue windfall for the city will be significant.”

“By the way, St. Louis has a history of extending tax abatements for developers to longer terms.

“But the thrust of Roddy’s remarks is well understood by all – in a budget environment of forced scarcity, there are increasingly strong demarcations between winners and losers, and parents who plan on sending children to free public schools are increasingly losers.

“To be fair to Roddy, a great deal of St. Louis’s financial constraints, particularly in relation to the city’s ability to cover the cost of education, is the fault of the state of Missouri.

“A 2015 accounting of state school funding found Missouri is “underfunding its K-12 schools by $656 million statewide, nearly 20 percent below the required level.” The budget situation for families with children has not improved a lot since then, with this year’s installment cutting spending on school buses, higher education, and social services.

“Missouri is one of 27 states that spends less on education than it did in 2008.”

There is a trend behind this. Education costs money. Gentrifying cities don’t want children. Does America want to educate its children?

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding, St. Louis

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

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2017 //
15

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

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

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

He writes:

“Florida’s broad ethics laws are a joke.

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

“Some lawmakers earn a paycheck tied to charter schools.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kansas: Court Hammers State Lawyers Over Latest School Funding Plan

By dianeravitch
July 20, 2017 //
5

The great puzzle in Kansas is how the State got such a thoughtful Supreme Court, one that actually cares about education.

Kansas is in a deep budget hole because Governor Sam Brownback cut taxes repeatedly, in the belief that low taxes would produce economic growth. Only it didn’t, and the schools are in big trouble.

The court has repeatedly ordered the state legislature to produce a school funding plan that meets the requirements of the state constitution. After years of budget cuts, the state’s schools are in dire need of money. At one point, legislators grumbled ominous threats about how they might shake up the court to undermine its authority.

But now the lawyers for the state are in court, and the justices are insistent on a commitment to a fair funding plan.

Attorneys for the state and the Legislature faced a barrage of questions from skeptical Kansas Supreme Court justices Tuesday scrutinizing the Legislature’s school finance plan.

Solicitor general Stephen McAllister and Jeff King, a former Senate vice president, sought to fend off claims from school districts that Kansas is doing too little to make up for several years in which budget cuts and funding stagnation became the norm and school budgets fell behind inflation.

The justices repeatedly interrupted their arguments to seek deeper clarification of calculations the state cited to justify adding $293 million to school funding over the next two years. And they showed some interest in potentially retaining jurisdiction once they have issued their ruling, to ensure the state complies.

McAllister and King stood their ground, arguing the state’s solution meets the court’s previous demands.

“S.B. 19 makes substantial efforts to improve the funding,” McAllister said, using the plan’s legislative bill number.

Digging into the math

In the span of Gannon v. Kansas’ seven-year history, district court judges and the state Supreme Court have repeatedly struck down Kansas’ school funding schemes as unconstitutional.

Among the justices’ concerns in this latest round of the legal battle was a statistical analysis of student achievement that the Legislature generated this spring and used to extrapolate what statewide funding should be. The calculation was based on spending levels at 41 school districts found to be performing well on certain academic outcomes.

“I understand the math,” Justice Dan Biles told McAllister. “I need to know what makes that reliable and valid, and I’m not seeing it here.”

‘I understand the math. I need to know what makes that reliable and valid, and I’m not seeing it here.’ — Justice Dan Biles
The justices homed in on methodological particulars, such as the use of averages instead of medians and whether the omission of budget changes at six school districts could have skewed the results. And they questioned whether lawmakers had cherry-picked portions of past school finance studies to minimize the state’s financial obligations.

Justice Eric Rosen asked about the state’s reliance on local property taxes to fund education through a system that allows school boards to elect to spend more. The concern is that poorer school districts are less likely to do so because of the burden on local taxpayers.

“What happens to those children?” he said, referring to students in those areas.

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