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Florida: The Legislature’s Plan to Destroy Public Schools and Enrich Their Cronies

By dianeravitch
June 26, 2017 //
17

Kathleen Oropeza of the parent group Fund Education Now has prepared an analysis of the destructive law passed by the Florida legislature and signed by Governor Rick Scott. To read the links, go to the post here.


HB 7069: Florida’s K-12 nightmare foreshadows the nation’s future

The Florida legislature set a dangerous precedent this year. One that will no doubt be repeated in GOP-controlled states across the nation.

Speaker Richard Corcoran and Senate President Joe Negron under scrutiny from Gov. Scott negotiated every major public education policy into HB 7069 and designed the K-12 budget under a transactional cloak of darkness – locking out everyone but themselves. Each man had his own rigid demands heavily supported by outside influence. Senators and Representatives were rendered so insignificant they should have stayed home.

Secret deals

Scott wanted funding restored to Visit Florida ($86M) and Enterprise Florida ($75M), a corporate incentive slush fund. Negron wanted funding and changes to higher Education and a reservoir near Lake Okeechobee. Corcoran wanted to enact a sweeping assault on public schools setting up Florida to be the poster child for the privatizing “choice expansion” soon to be rolled out by U.S. ED Secretary DeVos. To coerce passage, they included mandated recess and the Gardiner ESE voucher expansion, both bills that would have passed on their own. Politicians have used Florida’s public school children either as collateral or an “acceptable loss” for far too long.

As a result, HB 7069 emerged eligible only for a single up/down vote. No debate.

Derivative of 55 other bills, the only supporters of HB 7069 were the Koch Bros, Jeb’s Foundations and the charter industry lobby. Without exception, legitimate parent groups, who sent over 150,000 letters, joined stakeholders ranging from teachers to districts and superintendents in opposition of this bill.

Florida has been in the throes of a devastating public K-12 “reform” policy experiment for twenty years. Jeb Bush weaponized the Florida “A-F Accountability System” with high stakes tests, mandatory retention, school grades that mostly reflect zip codes and a profound disrespect for professional educators.

Thanks to HB 7069, even highly effective teachers are no longer sure of a job the following year. Florida politicians consistently talk about placing the best teachers in Title 1 schools where they may no longer be ranked “highly effective.” The Best & Brightest Bonus expansion in HB 7069 effectively punishes these teachers. As a result, politics are stifling the ability of teachers to serve at risk students by denying even the smallest gesture of job security.

Universally opposed by advocates

Every public education advocate in the nation should be concerned about what Florida is doing. The state’s longstanding 3:1 ratio of GOP to Democrats makes political balance impossible. This session, Speaker Corocran made no attempt to hide his contempt for public education. He began by calling teachers “downright evil, crazy, disgusting and repugnant.” HB 7069 disrespects the authority of duly elected school boards by forcing them to share their only capital outlay money with corporate charter chains. In addition, the state gives charters up to $100M per year from Public Education Capital Outlay funding derived from a telecommunications tax. Districts never see a dime!

Of course, Corcoran accuses them of whining, “It’s their bloat, inefficiency and gross over-spending. Their problem is their mismanagement…They just want to build Taj Mahals.” This deception ignores the fact that the Florida legislature has refused to invest any additional funds in K-12 education since 2008. Gov. Scott is proud that the 2017 budget includes a paltry $100 extra per student for just one year. Thanks to HB 7069 that money is already spent on new students, making up for lost capital funding and attempting to rescue programs that will be cut due to the shift in Title 1 expenditures.

Hostile to public education

Perhaps the worst policy found in HB 7069 is the $140 million dollar “Schools of Hope” which forces districts to either immediately close “D” and “F” schools or permanently hand them over to for-profit charter chains with zero history of successfully mitigating the impact of generational poverty. There’s no guarantee that these struggling students will actually attend a “school of hope.” This program is designed to escalate the takeover of district schools by a corporate charter chain.

Further, legislators purposely ignore proven public school successes such as the Evans Community School in Orlando.

People are angry about HB 7069. All indications are that it will be an issue in the 2018 mid-term elections. Sen. Gary Farmer is mulling over a lawsuit concerning the legality of using legislation to strip constitutionally granted authority from school boards.

Voucher mission creep

Gov. Scott chose to sign HB 7069 at an ESE Catholic School knowing that DeVos intends to kill the separation of church and state and pursue publicly funded vouchers for religious schools. Knowing that intent might not be well received, Scott used the expansion of the Gardiner ESE voucher as a beard to avoid praising the divisive contents of the bill. The Gardiner ESE voucher is another corporate tax credit that forces recipients to leave the state K-12 school system, giving parents the ability to choose an education for their child devoid of standards or any accountability. Make no mistake this program encourages mission creep toward Jeb and Betsy’s dream of universal vouchers. And some form of ESE voucher will be coming to your state, if it hasn’t already.

Jeb, along with the Milton Friedman Foundation and a formidable slew of “Return on Investment” billionaire philanthropists ranging from Bill Gates to Betsy DeVos share a singular view. Instead of truly wanting every child to get an excellent education, they are obsessed with liquidating our greatest public asset for the sake of profit and “choice” ideology.

Profit over people

Florida’s history of unmitigated charter growth is a tale of wasted tax dollars, scandal, closed schools and abandoned students The latest charter school fraud involves Newpoint Charters, racketeering charges and $57 million up in smoke.

Study the contents of HB 7069 carefully. This bill was born of secrecy, power-hoarding and deceit. It’s a blatant strategy to pass hostile pieces of legislation that could never be voted up alone. It’s a clear-eyed warning that the profiteers coming to dismantle Florida public schools will not be contained to a single state.

What’s in Florida’s HB 7069?

Title 1 Funds

• Redirects and dilutes Title I funds currently used by districts to provide a variety of district-wide programs that benefit some of the most vulnerable students.
• Eliminates district-wide programs currently funded with a portion of Title I money such as, AVID, mentorship programs, and some services offered by school transformation offices.

School Districts must give Charters a portion of locally levied capital outlay funding

• Requires school districts to share locally derived capital outlay funds with charters leaving a huge deficit in the sole funding source used by school boards to build, maintain and improve schools. Ex: Palm Beach County district expects to lose at least $230 million over 10 years; Broward County will lose at least $300 million over 10 years.
• Districts must prove need, charters do not.
• Once this capital outlay funding is shared, private corporations are free to keep the money to invest in buildings and improve property that the public will never own.
• No language to prevent taxpayer funds for capital projects from enriching for-profit corporate charters

Schools of Hope/High Impact Corporate Charter welfare (line 184)

• Creates the “Schools of Hope” program, funded with $140 million by the legislature for out of state charters to take over the education of the most vulnerable students in Florida with zero proof that there is any record of success in turning around schools
• Redirects further funding from traditional public schools and provides a corporate welfare program for charters.
• Does not require the charters to service the students in the schools that they are taking over.
• Increases the number of schools subject to charter take over because it requires school districts to prepare emergency plans if any school in the district earns a “D” or “F”
• Language from HB 7101, including the mandate that school districts use a standard contract and any amendments to the contract are deemed to violate charter schools flexibility per statute
• Allows charters to use district facilities at a deeply discounted rate that my not reflect the fair market value of properties.
• Allows just 25 schools from districts to compete for Schools of Hope funding – If Florida invested in struggling schools, Schools of Hope would be redundant

Charters get to grade District public schools

• Permits charter schools to “grade” school districts on their performance
• Does not allow for school districts to do the same to charters

Charter School Land Use

• Allows charter schools to bypass any land use or zoning requirements of local jurisdictions
• Preempts the authority of local jurisdictions and doesn’t permit local community participation on land use or zoning decisions that potentially affect their property uses and values
• Doesn’t allow for local governments or local citizens to evaluate the impacts on their communities caused by charter schools on issues such as traffic capacity and consistency with approved uses already in place
• School districts are not given the same flexibility as corporate charter chains.

Charter access to public facilities

• Allows charters to use district facilities at a deeply discounted rate that my not reflect the fair market value of properties.
• Requires districts to report to DOE if any facility or portion of a facility is vacant, underused, or surplus.
• Expands the current requirement of reporting surplus properties.
• Could result in a charter school operating simultaneously as an operating public school, affecting the ability of a district to properly plan for future growth.
• Grants charter schools sovereign immunity equal to what public entities currently have under state law.

Charters can hire non-certified teachers

• Allows “Schools of Hope” to hire non-certified teachers and administrators.
• These teachers and administrators are servicing some of the most vulnerable students in Florida.
• Why would the standards for these teachers and administrators be lowered?

Exempts corporate charter chains from paying for District services

• Caps the administration fees a school district may charge a charter for educational services.
• Exempts Charters from paying for additional services outside the agreed administrative fee, causing Districts to subsidize the cost of these extra services
• Impedes a district’s ability to provide adequate educational services for students enrolled in its district.

Charters Usurp Superintendent Authority/Schools of Excellence

• Mandates that a school of excellence be a part of the principal autonomy program which attempts to usurp superintendent powers under the constitution.
• Caps the administration fees a school district may charge a charter for educational services.
• If a district provides additional services to a charter outside what is contemplated with the administrative fee, it would result in school districts having to subsidize charter school programs and potentially affect a district’s ability to provide adequate educational services for students enrolled in its district.
Charters Usurp locally elected school boards
• Grants charter school systems governing board a designation as an local educational agency
• Allows charters to bypass local control and allowing them to remain largely unaccountable to the public despite receiving a significant amount of taxpayer funding.

School Grade Manipulation

• Requires the educational data from a student that transfers to a private school or comes from a private school to be factored into a school’s grade, despite the fact that the school is not providing educational services to the student.

Teachers

• Removes teacher bonus caps for IB, AP, and CAPE without funding.
• Teacher Contracts: Contains a provision limiting the employment contracts that school districts may award to teachers to one year.
• Makes VAM teacher evaluation system optional for districts

Best & Brightest Teacher Bonus

• Reduces bonus for teenage SAT/ACT scores and highly effective rank from $10K to $6K for the next three years
• Adds a principal bonus of $4K, uses qualifications that have no proven correlation to teacher or principal performance.
• $1,200/year before taxes to “highly effective” teachers
• Up to $800/year before taxes to “effective” teachers
• Does not provide much-needed permanent teacher raises

Gardiner ESE Voucher

• Adds an additional $30 million to the existing program which offers $10K vouchers to parents of ESE students
• In exchange, parents give up child’s right to a free and appropriate public education (FAPE).
• Funding is generated by allowing corporations to divert what would be Florida general revenue taxes to Step up for Students, the designated “Scholarship Funding Organization” who earns a management fee off of the gross

Recess

• Mandates 100 minutes of recess per week for all K-5 students in District public schools
• Exempts charter schools from this mandate – granting a carve-out from any expenses incurred by the recess mandate

Kathleen Oropeza is co –founder of FundEducationNow.org, a non-partisan public education advocacy group working to bring voters into a thoughtful discussion about school reforms and the threat of privatization. She also writes The EdVocate Blog and is the mother of two public school children. Reach Kathleen at: Kathleen@fundeducationnow.org

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Fraud, Funding, Privatization, Testing

Carol Burris: The Broken Promises and Scams of the Charter Industry

By dianeravitch
June 23, 2017 //
15

Carol Burris notes in this article that the NAACP passed a resolution last year demanding a moratorium on new charters until charters cleaned up their actioms and policies.

Instead of doing some self-examination and trying to right what was wrong, the charter apologists attacked the NAACP.

Burris reviews some of the notable charter scams and corruption in the past year or so.

Back in the 1990s, when I was a Charter fan, I believed that charters would cost less money (no bureaucracy), but now they demand the same funding as public schools. The slogan of the day was that charters would get autonomy in exchange for accountability.

Now we know, 25 years later, that charters want autonomy with no accountability.

That’s a bad deal for students, teachers, and taxpayers. It does not produce better education. It robs public schools of resources. We are re-creating a dual school system. This is not Reform. It is a massive scam.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Discipline and Suspensions, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization, Segregation

Marc Tucker: Trump’s Budget Takes from the Poor to Give to the Rich

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2017 //
36

Marc Tucker says that Trump’s budget will not make America great again. It is a reverse Robin Hood plan, taking from the poor and giving to the rich.

“The first reaction is all gut. The budget, on its face, would represent a gigantic redistribution of resources from the poor to the rich. To say that that is morally bankrupt is to understate the case. There is no rational argument for such a policy.

“The administration makes three cases for its proposals. The first is that tax breaks for the rich while robbing the poor to pay for the tax cuts will generate so much growth that the taxes on the increased income will more than pay for the tax relief. That argument has been advanced again and again despite a continuing lack of evidence that it has ever actually worked out that way. If you want to see the most visible and colossal evidence for the failure of this theory, you have only to look at Kansas, which has been virtually bankrupted by Governor Sam Brownback’s determination to go down this rat hole.

“The second is that all the administration is doing is giving freeloaders an incentive to work. That may be a masterpiece of propaganda, but not a masterpiece of reasoning. Someone has to explain to me how taking away financial support to go to college from low-income high school graduates is going to give these “freeloaders” an incentive to work. I want to know how giant cuts to the National Institutes of Health research budget on life-saving drugs is giving freeloaders an incentive to work.

“The third and last argument this administration has advanced for this budget is that the evidence that the programs they plan to terminate work is either weak or nonexistent. Without conceding the strength of their evidence that they do not work—the evidence is at worst mixed—let’s just look at the logic of the argument. Almost all of these programs are intended to help vulnerable populations. Surely, if they do not work, the responsibility of government is to replace them with stronger programs intended to accomplish the same objective. Replacing them with nothing but “choice” suggests that the administration does not care what the question was as long as the answer is choice, which is the very definition of policy made on the basis not of evidence but of ideology.

“When I say ideology, I am referring to the belief that something is true despite all the evidence to the contrary. Does the President’s Budget Director Mick Mulvaney actually believe, despite decades of evidence to the contrary and the counsel of most economists from both parties, that giant tax cuts will pay for themselves? Or could it be that ideology is not really the problem here, that greed is the problem? Are we looking at the result of a political system that has been captured in part by the very rich, people who spend their time on the golf course telling each other that it is really they who produce economic growth and are entitled to its benefits and who now happen to have the political power to enforce those views on the rest of us? Or is it both?

“That is my gut speaking, my gut honing in on the gigantic injustice that would be wreaked on the nation if this budget were in fact to become the United States government budget. And then I relax a little bit. It will not happen, I say to myself. Ronald Reagan offered a budget like this to the Congress and the Congress virtually ignored it. So it won’t happen this time either, I say to myself…

“The truth is that the administration’s budget will make enormous cuts in exactly the kind of research and development that is the key to our economic future, will cripple the universities that have driven the development of our best technologies decade after decade, will kneecap the disadvantaged students on whom the future of all of us now depends. My whole argument hinges on the idea that our people are our future and our future depends on giving our people, all of them, a world-class education and training to match. And what is the administration’s strategy for that? It is to cut the education and job training budget to ribbons and offer us choice as its sole strategy for improving student achievement. Choice well done can help at the margins, but what I just described is not a weight that choice can bear.

“The budget is a prism that casts a shining beam on who we are as a nation, what we believe in and what kind of nation we want to be. I would argue that the budget we need is neither the budget the administration has offered nor the budget we have. The Democrats will have to acknowledge that the imperative is not to keep all the social programs we have and start adding more (yes, it is true that some are not working as well as they should and it is also true that some are there not to provide needed services but to earn political support) and the Republicans will have to give up tax reduction as the holy grail of national politics (even if that costs them the open pockets of some of their richest contributors). The question we all have to ask is, in a very constrained economic environment, how much can we afford to spend on the current needs of our people while making the investments we have to make now to enjoy broadly shared prosperity tomorrow?”

Categories Budget Cuts, Economy, Funding

Pennsylvania: Haverford School Board Opposes Charter “Reform” Legislation

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2017 //
1

The Pennsylvania legislature is considering a bill to “reform” charter schools, but it still allows charters to drain resources from public schools without reimbursement, and it still preserves the low-performing cybercharters that milk resources from public schools with providing a decent education to any students.

Many grassroots groups oppose this bill, and the Haverford School Board just voted 7-1 against it.

The board of school directors recently joined Education Voters of Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, Pennsylvania School Boards Association, Education Law Center and other school districts around the state that have voiced opposition to provisions for charter school reform in House Bill 97.

School directors voted 7-1 to adopt a resolution opposing the bill, which they allege “fails to establish meaningful change” from the state’s 20-year-old Charter School Law.

Approved by the state House in April, HB 97 is currently in the Senate Education Committee where amendments are under consideration, said school director and chair of the Delaware County School Boards Legislative Council Larry Feinberg, the resolution’s sponsor.

The resolution states that charter schools that are “publicly funded and privately operated institutions governed by non-elected boards …not accountable to taxpayers, yet paid for with local school district funds….”

Larry Feinberg said that while Haverford has no brick and mortar charter schools, the district has spent $2.4 million since 2012 on historically underperforming cybercharters, with $90.9 million spent county wide for “something that doesn’t work.”

And, “I have grave concerns about accountability,” Feinberg said, recalling Pennsylvania Cyber Charter founder Nick Trombetta’s diversion of funds to make lavish purchases for himself, his girlfriend and family members.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, For-Profit, Fraud, Funding, Pennsylvania, Resistance

Chicago: Rahm Emanuel’s Zany Graduation Requirement Draws Mixed Notices

By dianeravitch
June 16, 2017 //
22

Rahm Emanuel has a new plan: instead of funding the Chicago public schools, the Mayor–who controls the school system–has raised graduation requirements. Students cannot graduate unless they can prove they have post-secondary plans. Presumably, they will remain in high school for the rest of their lives if not.

Dare we say it is doomed to fail?

“In a radical policy change being referred to as everything from “forward thinking” to “remarkably silly,” high school seniors in Chicago, starting with the class of 2020, will not be able to graduate unless they present “evidence of a postsecondary plan.”

“The policy — formally known as “Learn.Plan.Succeed” — was announced by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel in early April and quietly approved by the Chicago Board of Education in late May.

“Under the initiative, allowable evidence of a postsecondary plan can include things such as a college acceptance letter, a military enlistment letter, proof of employment or a job offer. It can also include acceptance into an apprenticeship program, a job program or a “gap year” program. Waivers may be allowed for students with “extenuating circumstances.”

“Emanuel is slated to discuss the new policy and other education initiatives at the National Press Club next week.

“The new graduation requirement — considered the first of its kind in the nation — comes at a time when Illinois finds itself in the midst of a longtime state budget impasse and massive debt, plummeting regional public university enrollment, and at a time when Chicago’s public school system itself had to borrow $389 million just to stay open to finish the 2016-2017 school year.

“It also comes at a time when concerns are being raised anew about concentrated joblessness among Chicago’s Black and Latino youth, who also comprise the vast majority of Chicago’s public school students.

“The new graduation requirement is drawing mixed reviews among youth and education policy experts, some of whom are raising questions about its workability and practicality given Chicago’s joblessness and Illinois’ budget woes.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Chicago, Emanuel, Rahm, Funding, High School Graduation

Contact Your PBS Station to Demand Equal Time for Pro-Public Education Message

By dianeravitch
June 15, 2017 //
61

The Network for Public Education invites you to contact your local PBS station to protest the one-sided three-hour special “School Inc.” The letter in the link tells you how to contact your PBS affiliate.

We urge two courses of action, for the sake of balance. Please request that they air my 10-minute response which was filmed by the NYC affiliate of PBS. Please urge them to show “Backpack Full of Cash,” made by award-winning Stone Lantern Productions; it tells the story of the corporate assault on public schools.

That is 70 minutes of time, certainly not equal time. PBS, in the interests of fairness, should identify and run three hours of documentaries that show an accurate picture of the accomplishments and challenges of public schools.

PBS is running a three-hour special that attacks public schools and celebrates privatization. “School Inc” claims that public schools are not “innovative,” but not one of its free-market examples are innovative in any way, other than that they are run by private corporations, many for profit. The narrator and creator of this series is the late Andrew Coulson, a libertarian who believed in free-market education.

I watched all three hours of the program twice, preparing for a 10-minute interview at WNET, the New York City affiliate of PBS. I learned that the three foundations that funded the program are libertarian supporters of vouchers. The program is pro-privatization propaganda. At no point does Coulson interview anyone who disagrees with him. He lauds the free-market reforms in Chile and Sweden, which reputable scholars have found wanting. Chile is one of the most segregated school systems in the world, and Sweden’s scores on international tests have fallen since the introduction of Choice and for-profit schooling.

This program leads the way in promoting the DeVos agenda of free-market education.

Please send your email. Be heard.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Funding, Network for Public Education, Privatization, Resistance

Kansas: The Collapse of Governor Brownback’s Radical Tax-Cutting Plan

By dianeravitch
June 15, 2017 //
13

When Sam Brownback became governor of Kansas, he was all fired up with a simple yet radical idea: Cut taxes and businesses will expand and the economy will grow. State revenues dropped dramatically. School funding suffered deep cuts. Social services of all kinds lost money. And now the legislature is repudiating Brownback’s tax cuts. They voted to increase taxes. Brownback, having learned nothing, vetoed the budget. The legislature overrode his veto.

Farewell, Governor Brownback. And good riddance to failed ideas.

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding, Kansas

William Mathis: Trump’s Budget is a Model of Doublespeak and Indifference to Children

By dianeravitch
June 12, 2017 //
12

William Mathis describes Trump’s education budget as a demonstration of Doublespeak, meant to mask its indifference to children.

He writes:

“In 1965, the federal government, driven by the obligation to provide equal opportunities to the least fortunate of our citizens, passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It was intended to lift the nation by strengthening our poorest children and schools, improving the quality of teaching, opening the doors of higher education, and providing skills to adults. It embraced the ideal voiced by the late President Kennedy that “a rising tide lifts all boats.” And the emphasis was on building the common good. By widely investing in our citizens, we invest in the health of our society and economy.

“Those principles have found no refuge in the work of President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos; all that remains of these great purposes are a confusion of empty words made to appear as if the worst were the better. Larded with phrases like “commitment to improving education” and “maintaining support for the nation’s most vulnerable students,” Trump proposes to slash federal education programs by $9.2 billion, or 13.5 percent. This is on top of past unmet needs, since federal obligations to poor and special education children have never been fully met. Starved programs are now set to have their rations reduced or cut entirely.

“With a remarkable lack of compassion, the Special Olympics budget was zeroed. Twenty-two programs are eliminated including community learning centers, arts, pre-school and teacher improvement.

Blind to clear evidence, every dollar invested in high-quality early childhood education returns $8 in positive social outcomes such as reduced unemployment, stable families, less incarceration and the like. Yet the Trump budget treats this wise and productive investment as another area to defund: Head Start and child care are slotted for small reductions, while preschool development grants are entirely eliminated.

“The “civil rights” framing is stunning doubletalk, since a growing body of independent research shows that school choice segregates students by race, handicap and socioeconomic level.

“It doesn’t get any easier for poor and middle-class students as they get older. Loan forgiveness programs for new college graduates working in schools or government would be eliminated. Student loan interest would be increased. In Trump’s plan, 300,000 students would lose their work-study jobs. In all, $143 billion would be removed over 10 years.

“Why make these cuts? The proposal calls for an increase in defense spending of more than $50 billion (a 10 percent increase) plus tax cuts for the wealthy – and that money has to come from somewhere. By these deeds, a capacity for war is valued more than the needs of the citizenry.

“Yet, Trump says “education is the civil rights issue of our time.” This budget raises questions about whether his true objective is to cut civil rights. The proposal’s centerpiece is school choice. The budget seeks to funnel $1.4 billion, in new as well as repurposed funds, into private schools. The “civil rights” framing is stunning doubletalk, since a growing body of independent research shows that school choice segregates students by race, handicap and socioeconomic level.”

Read on.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Fraud, Funding

Lisa Haver: It Is Time to Establish Democratic Control of Philadelphia’s Public Schools

By dianeravitch
June 9, 2017 //
7

For many years, the public schools of Philadelphia have been drastically underfunded by the state of Pennsylvania. This created a series of fiscal crises, which should have produced equitable funding, but instead gave cause for a state takeover, thus blaming the city for the state’s failures. The state established the appointed School Reform Commission in 2001. The SRC appointed Paul Vallas to run the district, and he launched the nation’s largest experiment (to that date) in privatized schooling, handing over some 40 schools to private, for-profit, and university management. The experiment was an expensive failure, and he left the city with a large deficit, bound for New Orleans to push an even bigger experiment in school privatization.

The SRC has continued the Vallas tradition, closing public schools, opening charter schools, and leaving public schools in desperate straits.

To sum it up, state control has been a disaster for the children of Philadelphia.

Lisa Haver wrote an article in the Philadelphia Daily News outlining the secrecy that surrounds the deliberations of the School Reform Commission. Even the budget is hidden from public view until the SRC has made all its decisions, without considering the voices of parents or teachers.

She asks and answers questions about the role and lack of transparency of the SRC.

She concludes like this:

“Should the SRC schedule a meeting in which it plans to decide on renewals of 23 charter schools with less than a week’s notice?

“The district’s budget shows that it will spend $894 million — about one-third of the budget — on charters next year. Shouldn’t the SRC allow enough time for those paying the tab to read the reports? They may want to ask why schools that have met none of the standards are being recommended for renewal.

“Should the SRC publicly deliberate before voting on significant financial, academic and policy resolutions?

“The SRC approved contracts totaling $149.2 million at its February meeting; it spent $173.1 million in March. Resolutions are voted on in batches of 10 or 15, with little explanation of why.

“How do we reform the School Reform Commission? By abolishing it. Philadelphians have the right, as all other Pennsylvanians do, to decide who will represent them on an elected school board.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Industry, Funding, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

Valerie Strauss Recaps Betsy DeVos’s Testimony about the Budget and Civil Rights

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2017 //
17

I confess. I didn’t watch Betsy DeVos testify. I didn’t want to. No one pays me to blog every day, so I have some discretion in how I use my time. What I did instead, which was very taxing, was to watch preview DVDs on the PBS special “School Inc.,” because I have been invited to tape a response for Channel 13, New York City’s PBS station. It is worse than anything you anticipated in terms of distortion, inaccuracies, slander of public schools, and adulation of the free market. Maybe I should have watched DeVos.

Valerie Strauss did watch DeVos. Here is her report.

She made clear that she would not put any limits on for-profit education companies. She recommended virtual charters to an Alabama senator, although even the charter industry has called out online schools for their poor academic results.

And here is a key quote:

“She was asked repeatedly whether private schools that would be part of the administration’s proposed program to fund and study a new voucher program would be subject to federal discrimination and special education laws, and she repeatedly said, “Schools that receive federal funds must follow federal law.””

As our reader Laura Chapman pointed out in a comment, voucher funds are always defended by the assertion that the public money goes to the family, not the school. Tax credits for vouchers go to corporations who pay for vouchers. Every voucher program operates under the fiction that the public money does not go to the school.

The money is laundered through the family or third parties.

So DeVos is cleverly masking the fact that federal law will not apply to schools that receive federal funds.

It is a three-card Monte game.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Fraud, Funding, Hoax, Privatization, Vouchers
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