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Jan Resseger: The Sordid Story of ECOT and Its Ripoff of Taxpayers in Ohio

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2017 //
10

Jan Resseger writes in The Progressive about the biggest charter scam in Ohio.

When a charter operator gets a lot of money from the state, and selfsame charter operator gives generously to legislators, how can said charter operator ever be held accountable?

In Ohio, the press got fed up with ECOT and started paying attention to charter frauds. Politicians cannot tolerate constant negative press. So, lo and behold, the state conducted an audit of ECOT.

Resseger writes:

“With Betsy DeVos, a long-committed charter school proponent, in charge of the U.S. Department of Education, the country should look to recent goings-on in Ohio as a warning sign of what can happen when public institutions are privatized and an example of why a moratorium on more of these schools is necessary.

“In 2000, Bill Lager founded the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow and the two privately held, for-profit companies that operate the school—IQ Innovations, which provides ECOT’s curriculum, and Altair Learning Management, which manages the school’s operations. According to an old 2003, Ohio Department of Education policy, online charter schools were paid a per-pupil amount from the state for every student enrolled. Until 2015, there was not a requirement that virtual academies demonstrated actual daily participation. Once the Legislature began demanding proof that students were regularly logging on to their computers, Lager and his attorneys have blamed the state for suddenly and unfairly changing the rules. In the 2015-2016 school year, ECOT was paid $106 million in public tax dollars for the more than 15,000 students it said were enrolled, but the state was able to verify the active participation of only 6,300 students.

“The state has demanded that ECOT pay back $60 million the school was over-paid for the 2015-2016 school year, but Lager has used his connections to the state’s biggest lobbyists and key Republican friends in the legislature to pressure lawmakers, even creating attack ads on TV aimed at the Department of Education.

“Thanks to relentless exposure of the scandal by the state’s major newspapers, it appears, finally, that Ohio may claw back some of the tax dollars Lager has stolen. But the state and a lot of local school districts are still owed $60 million for the 2015-2016 school year. And the Columbus Dispatch reports that the Ohio Department of Education has not released results of a new attendance audit for the 2016-2017 school year.

“Lager has been in court all year to block the state from making ECOT repay the money. In mid-June, the Ohio State Board of Education voted almost unanimously to accept the ruling of a hearing officer from the Ohio Department of Education, who is reported by the Columbus Dispatch to have declared that no school’s intent is to “teach to what could be the equivalent of an empty classroom.”

Keep your eyes on ECOT and whether it will be held accountable. Like other states, Ohio desperately needs charter legislation that is not written by lawyers for the charter industry. Ohio courts have ruled that anything purchased by a charter operator with PUBLIC funds belongs to the charter, even if it goes out of business. The law was written that way, by charter lobbyists.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Funding, Ohio, Privatization

Florida Editorial: Will the Fight to Save Public Education Spread?

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2017 //
2

Congratulations to the editorial board Of the the Sun-Sentinel in Broward County, Florida, which published a strong editorial lambasting the Legislature for passing HB 7069.

Several school districts are planning a lawsuit to stop the law from being implemented. The law will do massive harm to the state’s public schools while diverting millions to the charter industry. Several key legislators have financial interests in charter schools. The bill is a travesty.

The editorial board of the Sun-Sentinel wrote:

“Last week the Broward County School Board approved a lawsuit against House Bill 7069. Though legislators crammed more than 50 bills into HB 7069, the Legislature passed it with almost no debate. House leaders, including those with ties to charter schools, crafted HB 7069 in the last days of the session. Despite protests from superintendents and school boards, Gov. Rick Scott signed the legislation.

“A memo from Barbara Myrick, the board’s general counsel, lists five grounds for a case that the law violates the Florida Constitution:

*Legislation must cover one subject. HB 7069 changes 69 state statutes;

*The law restricts school district from carrying out their duty to oversee contracts with charter schools;

*The program that allocates $140 million to so-called “Schools of Hope” sets no standard for how charter schools could spend that money and thus illegally circumvents local school boards;

*The law seeks to create a second, private system of public education;

*Under current law, schools can share public money with charter schools for construction. Under HB 7069, districts would have to share it.

“Supporters of the law, which became House Speaker Richard Corcoran’s priority, stuck the controversial provisions into a must-pass budget bill because most couldn’t have passed on their own. Some of the potential damage already is clear. Depriving school districts of construction money could harm their credit rating.

“Given that prospect, the Broward County School Board acted correctly in approving $25,000 to recruit an outside law firm. Next week, the Palm Beach County School Board will decide whether to file a lawsuit. The Miami-Dade County School Board is scheduled to hold a workshop on the issue this month.

“Broward County Superintendent Robert Runcie told the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board that HB 7069 would create “a parallel school system that could be privately managed without the requisite accountability. It would be a shadow, private system that runs on public dollars.”

“Example: The new rule that school districts share money for construction. The source of that revenue is a property tax dedicated to capital projects. There’s oversight when school districts spend that money, but nothing in HB 7069 requires charter schools to spend the money on construction and/or maintenance. There’s no oversight.

“Runcie also notes that the district has shared capital projects money when appropriate. One goal of the district’s 2014 general obligation bond was to reduce the ratio of students to computers, which at the time was six to one. It is now two to one.

“The district gave some of the new computers to charter schools but kept track of the equipment. When the district has had to close some of those schools, the district was able to recover the computers, which are public property.

“Now consider the “Schools of Hope” program. Supposedly, the state would use that $140 million to attract charter school operators that would set up near low-performing traditional public schools and give those students a better alternative.

“Nothing in the law, however, requires charter companies to take just students from those schools. Nor is there language to ensure that new operators would produce better results. No school board approval is required. Again, there is no oversight of public money.

“Supporters of HB 7069 wondered why the teachers union joined superintendents and school boards in opposition, since the bill contained a provision for teacher bonuses. Easy. Teachers wanted raises, not more one-time bonuses that add nothing to their pensions. And the state would continue to base bonuses on teachers’ SAT or ACT scores from years ago, not current performance. There could be no changes to the bonus program until 2021.

“Legislative leaders claim to support local control. HB 7069, however, strips control of local tax revenue from school boards and seeks to undermine Florida’s system of free public schools. The law is terrible public policy done in secret. More important, for the purpose of the lawsuit, HB 7069 is illegal.

“The Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade school districts estimate that the property tax provision of HB 7069 could cost them a combined $500 million over 10 years. Add the potential cost of higher borrowing rates and the case for a lawsuit is obvious. With luck, every school board in Florida will fight to overturn HB 7069 and protect public education.”

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

Washington State: 13 Lucky Billionaires Pay No Taxes!

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2017 //
30

In Washington State, the highest state court ordered the legislature to establish a new and equitable funding program for public schools. The legislature has not acted. The court is fining fining the legislature $1 million a day. The legislature ignores the court.

The highest court also ruled that charter schools can’t take money from the public school budget because they are NOT public schools. Public schools in Washington state are governed by elected boards, not private corporations.

The legislature doesn’t want to impose an income tax. There is no state income tax. Washington has 13 billionaires. Not one of them–including Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos–pays a dime to the state.

https://education.good.is/features/washington-state-wealthy-but-does-not-pay-for-schools

That explains why the billionaires are crazy for charter schools. That explains why the billionaires financed the election of opponents to the judges on the Supreme Court (the current judges were re-elected).

Tell the public that choice–not funding–is the best reform of all! Why tax billionaires when you can open charter schools instead.

Categories Billionaires, Funding, Washington State

Jersey Jazzman: Chris Christie Show His True Colors, on the Jersey Shore

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2017 //
13

Jersey Jazzman notes that Chris Christie will soon leave office as the most unpopular governor in the nation. He loved to ridicule those who disagreed with him, and one of his favorite targets was the state’s public schools and teachers, most especially their union. He never acknowled that the state is one of the three top-performing states on national tests (NAEP), the other two being Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Christie has cemented his rotten reputation as a greedy, crude bully with his latest escapade. The state was in a budget impasse, and many state beaches were closed on this past weekend. But Christie and his family went to the governor’s beach house and enjoyed the sun and an empty beach, while the public was excluded.

What really bothers JJ about Christie is his callow hypocrisy. He sends his own kids to private schools that are well funded while underfunding the state’s public schools.

His idea of “reform” does not translate into reduced class sizes or other necessities. A true “reformer,” he offers charters and vouchers instead of funding.

JJ writes:

“To be clear: I really don’t have a problem with Christie, or anyone else, sending their children to elite private schools, or to wealthy suburban public schools. What I find so disturbing is when some of those same people then turn around and declare how important education is for purposes of social equity, but refuse to support policies that adequately and equitably fund schools.

“Even worse is when these people substitute funding reform for “reforminess.” They claim that things like charter schools, gutting teacher workplace rights, expanded testing, test-based teacher evaluation, curricular changes, “personalized learning,” and school vouchers can serve as substitutes for adequately and equitably funding schools.

“But they then turn around and put their own children in elite private schools that spend far more per pupil than public schools — especially urban public schools. And again: these schools enroll very few children with special needs, keeping their costs relatively low.

“You will often hear these reformsters acknowledge that factors such as economic inequality and segregation negatively impact educational outcomes; however, in the same breath, they will gravely intone, “We can’t wait to fix poverty!”

“And so, their thinking goes, we have to expand charter schools no matter the negative consequences, or expand testing and its unvalidated uses no matter the negative consequences, or put more unproven digital stuff into schools no matter the possible negative consequences, and so on. And we have to do all this right now.

“It seems to me, however, that we now have more than enough evidence that school funding matters. It matters a lot. I mean, funding really matters. It does.

“Maybe we can’t solve poverty and segregation quickly; we could, however start getting more resources into schools that need it today. But getting adequate funding to schools — a necessary pre-condition for educational success — isn’t so much a problem of a lack of resources as it is a matter of political will.

“We’ve got plenty of money in this country (even if it is distributed extraordinarily unequally). There’s very little evidence we’re overspending on schooling relative to the rest of the world. We could drive more resources into the schools that enroll our least advantaged students much more quickly than we could expand private schools using vouchers or expand properly regulated charter schools.

“But we don’t. Instead, our leaders keep pushing reformy schemes based on outlier “successes” rather than funding reform, a policy that would quickly provide improvements across the K-12 education system. Worse, many of these same leaders then refuse to subject their own children to their designs, opting instead to enroll them in highly resourced schools.

“Chris Christie will be gone in a few months, and New Jersey might then begin to have a serious conversation about education funding. Sadly, many of our nation’s leaders, Republican and Democrat alike, are following Christie’s example. They refuse to address the issue of inadequate and inequitable school funding head on.

“Fortunately, even conservatives are starting to realize that effective schools and other government services come at a price. Let’s hope the era of Chris Christie and his ilk — and era where unproven reformy nonsense has replaced a commitment to getting schools the resources they need — will soon come to an end.

“If I had to pick one…

“ADDING: In the very earliest days of this blog — April, 2010 — I said that where Chris Christie sent his own kids to school was no one’s business.

“I was wrong.

“Of course, this was before Christie repeatedly underfunded the public schools, even after the Great Recession. This was before the lies of Chapter 78. This was before Christie tried to slash funding to the urban districts with his cruel “Fairness Formula.” This was before Christie showed repeatedly he never took education policy seriously. This was even before Christie unloaded some of his worst invective at the NJEA and teachers around the state.

“But I still should have known better. Anyone who is against the adequate and equitable funding of public schools yet sends their own children to a well-resourced private or public school is a massive hypocrite.

“They should be called so in no uncertain terms.”

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

Texas: House Republicans Say “Hell, No,” to Vouchers, Again

By dianeravitch
June 28, 2017 //
6

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has called a special session of the Legislature to deal with school finance and once again to push vouchers. Once more, he will try to bribe legislators to endorse vouchers if they want more funding. No vouchers, no funding. The state cut more than $5 billion from the education budget in 2011 and has never fully restored the cuts, even though the enrollment has grown.

As usual, the camel’s nose under the tent is vouchers for children with disabilities. Note that these children have federal rights in public schools but not in private voucher schools.

The State Senate, corralled by voucher fanatic Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, supports vouchers. The House, also controlled by Republicans, has turned them down repeatedly. Republicans representing rural areas and small towns don’t want to destroy their public schools. They are conservatives: they conserve, they don’t tear down their traditional institutions.

“The top House education leader said Sunday that “private school choice” is still dead in the lower chamber.

“We only voted six times against it in the House,” House Public Education Committee Chairman Dan Huberty said. “There’s nothing more offensive as a parent of a special-needs child than to tell me what I think I need. I’m prepared to have that discussion again. I don’t think [the Senate is] going to like it — because now I’m pissed off.”

“Huberty, R-Houston, told a crowd of school administrators at a panel at the University of Texas at Austin that he plans to restart the conversation on school finance in the July-August special session after the Senate and House hit a stalemate on the issue late during the regular session. Huberty’s bill pumping $1.5 billion into public schools died after the Senate appended a “private school choice” measure, opposed by the House.

“Huberty was joined by Education Committee Vice Chairman Diego Bernal, D-San Antonio, and committee member Gary VanDeaver, R-New Boston, on a panel hosted by the Texas Association of School Administrators, where they said they didn’t plan to give in to the Senate on the contentious bill subsidizing private school tuition for kids with special needs.”

Dan Hubert is on the honor roll of this blog already. Governor Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick are today listed on its Wall of Shame.

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding, Honor Roll, Special Education, Texas, Vouchers, Wall of Shame

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
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