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Good News from Texas!

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2017 //
9

The State Senate in Texas is still pushing vouchers, even though the last voucher bill was overwhelmingly defeated in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. The senate, under the thumb of Lt. Governor Dan Patrick (former rightwing talk show host), inserted a voucher program into a budget bill and sent it to the House.

The Speaker of the House, Joe Straus, issued the following statement on Wednesday:

“I was encouraged by much of what Governor Patrick said today. I was especially glad to hear that Governor Patrick wants to start passing bills that are priorities of the House, such as mental health reforms, fixing the broken A-F rating system and cybersecurity. These are not poll-tested priorities, but they can make a very real difference in Texans’ lives. I am grateful that the Senate will work with us to address them.

“Budget negotiations are going well but are far from finished. The Senate has indicated a willingness to use part of the $12 billion Economic Stabilization Fund. In addition, the two sides, along with the Comptroller’s office, are working through concerns about the use of Proposition 7 funds to certify the budget. I’m optimistic that we will produce a reasonable and equitable compromise on the budget. I appreciate the work of the Senate conferees and Governor Patrick on these issues.

“As I said in my letter to Governor Patrick, the House has worked diligently to pass priorities that are important to him. Senate Bill 2 has been scheduled for a vote on the floor of the House tomorrow. The House has already acted on a number of issues that are important to the Lieutenant Governor and will continue to do so. I’m glad that the Senate is beginning to extend the same courtesy.

“Governor Patrick talked about the importance of property tax relief. The Texas House is also concerned about property taxes, which is why we approved House Bill 21 to address the major cause of rising property-tax bills: local school taxes. As it passed the House, this legislation would begin to reduce our reliance on local property taxes in funding education. Nobody can claim to be serious about property-tax relief while consistently reducing the state’s share of education funding. The House made a sincere effort to start fixing our school finance system, but the Senate is trying to derail that effort at the 11th hour. The Senate is demanding that we provide far fewer resources for schools than the House approved and that we begin to subsidize private education – a concept that the members of the House overwhelmingly rejected in early April. The House is also serious about providing extra and targeted assistance for students with disabilities. This is why we put extra money in House Bill 21 to help students with dyslexia. We also overwhelmingly passed House Bill 23 to provide grants for schools that work with students who have autism and other disabilities. The Lieutenant Governor has not referred that bill to a Senate committee.

“Governor Patrick’s threat to force a special session unless he gets everything his way is regrettable, and I hope that he reconsiders. The best way to end this session is to reach consensus on as many issues as we can. Nobody is going to get everything they want. But we can come together on many issues and end this session knowing that we have positively addressed priorities that matter to Texas.”

I am proud of House Speaker Joe Strauss, a great Texan. I add his name to the honor roll of this blog. He understands that the overwhelming majority of students in Texas are enrolled in public schools, and that many of those schools never recovered from the cut of more than $5 billion in 2011. The students don’t need vouchers for religious and private schools. They need great public schools with experienced teachers and adequate resources.

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding, Honor Roll, Texas, Vouchers

Trump’s First Education Budget: Deep Cuts for Public Schools, Good News for Charters, School Choice

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2017 //
22

Trump unveiled his first education budget, and it contains many cuts to popular programs in public schools. But it has a bonanza for private alternatives to public schools.

The Washington Post obtained a draft copy of the new budget, which has not yet been submitted to Congress.

Funding for college work-study programs would be cut in half, public-service loan forgiveness would end and hundreds of millions of dollars that public schools could use for mental health, advanced coursework and other services would vanish under a Trump administration plan to cut $10.6 billion from federal education initiatives, according to budget documents obtained by The Washington Post.

The administration would channel part of the savings into its top priority: school choice. It seeks to spend about $400 million to expand charter schools and vouchers for private and religious schools, and another $1 billion to push public schools to adopt choice-friendly policies.

President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have repeatedly said they want to shrink the federal role in education and give parents more opportunity to choose their children’s schools.

Trump and DeVos are following the Obama formula for Race to the Top: Offer financial incentives for states to adopt the policies that the federal government wants. If they want the money they must volunteer, and that allegedly proves that participation was “voluntary.”

The budget proposal calls for a net $9.2 billion cut to the department, or 13.6 percent of the spending level Congress approved last month. It is likely to meet resistance on Capitol Hill because of strong constituencies seeking to protect current funding, ideological opposition to vouchers and fierce criticism of DeVos, a longtime Republican donor who became a household name during a bruising Senate confirmation battle…

Under the administration’s budget, two of the department’s largest expenditures in K-12 education, special education and Title I funds to help poor children, would remain unchanged compared to federal funding levels in the first half of fiscal 2017. However, high-poverty schools are likely to receive fewer dollars than in the past because of a new law that allows states to use up to 7 percent of Title I money for school improvement before distributing it to districts.

The cuts would come from eliminating at least 22 programs, some of which Trump outlined in March. Gone, for example, would be $1.2 billion for after-school programs that serve 1.6 million children, most of whom are poor, and $2.1 billion for teacher training and class-size reduction.

[Trump budget casualty: After-school programs for 1.6 million kids. Most are poor.]

The documents obtained by The Post — dated May 23, the day the president’s budget is expected to be released — outline the rest of the cuts, including a $15 million program that provides child care for low-income parents in college; a $27 million arts education program; two programs targeting Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian students, totaling $65 million; two international education and foreign language programs, $72 million; a $12 million program for gifted students; and $12 million for Special Olympics education programs.

Other programs would not be eliminated entirely, but would be cut significantly. Those include grants to states for career and technical education, which would lose $168 million, down 15 percent compared to current funding; adult basic literacy instruction, which would lose $96 million (down 16 percent); and Promise Neighborhoods, an Obama-era initiative meant to build networks of support for children in needy communities, which would lose $13 million (down 18 percent).

The Trump administration would dedicate no money to a fund for student support and academic enrichment that is meant to help schools pay for, among other things, mental-health services, anti-bullying initiatives, physical education, Advanced Placement courses and science and engineering instruction. Congress created the fund, which totals $400 million this fiscal year, by rolling together several smaller programs. Lawmakers authorized as much as $1.65 billion, but the administration’s budget for it in the next fiscal year is zero.

The cuts would make space for investments in choice, including $500 million for charter schools, up 50 percent over current funding. The administration also wants to spend $250 million on “Education Innovation and Research Grants,” which would pay for expanding and studying the impacts of vouchers for private and religious schools. It’s not clear how much would be spent on research versus on the vouchers themselves.

The new budget would also have a large impact of student aid programs for higher education.

It is clear that parents and educators must organize to fight for the funding of programs that benefit students in public schools.

Ninety percent of American children attend public schools, yet they are being neglected in the budgetary planning because Trump and DeVos favor charters, vouchers, and other kinds of school choice.

Don’t agonize. Organize.

Join the Network for Public Education. Be active in the fight against these cuts. Be active in the resistance to privatization and the Trump administration’s indifference/hostility to public schools.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts, Funding, Network for Public Education, School Choice, Student Financial Aid and Student Debt, Supporting public schools, Trump, U.S. Department of Education, Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers

Sara Stevenson Writes to the Texas Legislature: Please Say No to Vouchers

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2017 //
0

Sara Stevenson is a librarian at the O. Henry Middle School in Austin, Texas. She sent the following letter to members of the Legislature:

Dear senators and congressmen/women,

Please don’t add private school vouchers (ESAs) onto HB 21. House Bill 21 gives school districts much needed fiscal relief. Here in Austin ISD, we had to give away $406 million of our tax dollars this year. Next year it will be over $500 million. Austin ISD, being property rich, gives away more money due to recapture than any other district in the state. Meanwhile, 60% of our students qualify for free or reduced lunch.

If the legislature wants to pass private school vouchers, they need to do so in its own bill and not sneak it onto this bill. It needs the support of the Texas people, which it does not have. Polls show that Texans do NOT support spending public money on private school tuition. Furthermore, the Texas House recently voted almost unanimously against it. Please respect the will of the people and their representatives.

Private schools vary in quality as do public schools, but at least public schools are accountable to the state. Private schools are under no accountability measures, not even to follow IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) protections, a federal law since 1973. How does it serve special needs students to have their rights stripped?

Please take the voucher poison pill out of the legislation. Pass it on its own or wait until next session when you have a chance to garner more support.

Please help our Texas public schools. We need your support.

Best,

Sara Stevenson
Austin, Texas

Categories Accountability, Funding, Texas, Vouchers

Texas: Republicans in State Senate Try Again to Push Through a Voucher Bill

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2017 //
19

You know about the camel’s nose under the tent? That’s the game that Texas Republicans are playing in an effort to establish a foothold for vouchers. They have copied this tactic from other states. It goes like this: We don’t want vouchers for everyone; we want them just for this very small, very needy, very deserving group of children. If they get that bill passed, within a year or two, another group is added, then another, then another, until vouchers are available for everyone.

Just weeks ago, the Texas House of Representatives, firmly in the hands of Republicans, defeated the Senate’s voucher bill. It was widely assumed that vouchers were dead for this year. But, no, Senate Republicans added a voucher program only for children with disabilities to an important school finance proposal. Its advocates choose to ignore the fact that children with disabilities are protected by federal law in public schools, but not in private schools. They also ignore the fact that private schools for children with disabilities are far more expensive than the voucher they will offer.

The Senate’s version of the bill does not not yet have a legislative fiscal note. The Center for Public Policy Priorities estimates that it could mean about $8,300 for students to use with about $450 going back to the district.

With no income qualification cutoffs attached, the group estimates that Texas schools could lose about $37 million annually after the first year of ESAs if just 1 percent of eligible students used them.

Supporters of public education were happy about the school finance proposal, but they had to backtrack on their support when they saw that the Senate had added vouchers to the bill. For the public school supporters, this is a poison pill. Given the strong opposition to vouchers in the House, there is a good chance that the Senate voucher provision will not survive.

The members of the House must decide if they want the camel’s nose to enter the tent, knowing what will come next.

Categories Education Industry, Funding, Privatization, Special Education, Texas, Vouchers

Sue M. Legg: Florida’s Budget Bill is a Train Wreck for Public Schools, a Boon for Charter Operators

By dianeravitch
May 11, 2017 //
5

Here we go with the Great Money Heist in Florida.

HB7069 passed both houses of the legislature and will go to Governor Rick Scott for his signature.

In two posts, Sue M. Legg of the League of Women Voters analyzes the devastating impact of this budget bill for public schools. She hopes that Governor Scott will veto the bill. As she explains, money is being shifted to charter organizations and taken away from traditional public schools. Ten percent of the students in the state are enrolled in charter schools, but the needs of the ninety percent are ignored. The bill reduces base student funding, so that it is lower than it was a decade ago.

She writes:

The provisions to require local districts to share capital outlay with charter schools is untenable. It will cost districts already struggling with aging facilities, millions of dollars. The Schools of Hope proposal allocates $140 million for charter school takeovers of low performing public schools.

Creating charter systems that control groups of charters surely must stress the Florida constitutional requirement for a ‘uniform system of high quality schools’. These systems become their own local education agencies. This is a legal term that is now allocated to elected school boards. The systems would be able to receive funding directly with no oversight from districts.

The shift in the allocation of Title I funds for low income students also is adversely affected by the bill. Low performing schools would get the bulk of the money which then would go with Schools of Hope. The implications are far reaching if money is spread too thinly to support extra reading, tutoring and other services many children need.

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

Wendy Lecker: The War on Public Schools and the Public Good

By dianeravitch
May 10, 2017 //
5

Like Jan Resseger, Wendy Lecker paid tribute to the political philosopher Benjamin Barber. She acknowledged his work on behalf of democracy and the public good, which is currently under attack by a bipartisan coalition of corporate reformers.

She writes:

Political theorist Benjamin Barber, who died April 24, wrote about the importance of education as a public good. “Education not only speaks to the public, it is the means by which a public is forged.”

As he noted, education transforms individuals into responsible community members, first in their classrooms and ultimately in our democracy. Local school districts are also the basic units of democratic government.　

Michigan professor Marina Whitman recently noted that the essence of a public good is that it is non-excludable; i.e. all can partake, and non-rivalrous; i.e. giving one person the good does not diminish its availability to another.　

Some school reforms strengthen education as a public good; such as school finance reform, which seeks to ensure that all children have adequate educational resources.　
Unfortunately, the reforms pushed in the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations attack education as a public good. For example, choice — charters and vouchers — is a favorite policy of all three administrations. Choice operates on the excludable premise of “saving a few.”

In operation, choice makes education rivalrous. As a New York appellate court observed, diverting funds from public schools to charters ‘benefit a select few at the expense of the ‘common schools, wherein all the children of this State may be educated….’”　

Across this country, public money is diverted from public schools to charters with no consideration of need, quality or the impact on the majority of public school students. The result is invariably the creation of exclusive schools, out of the reach of voter oversight, at the expense of public schools that serve everyone.　

Charter advocates claimed charters would be superior without the constraints faced by local districts. However, after more than 20 years, charters are no better than public schools.

Moreover, they leave public schools without resources to serve the most vulnerable and communities disenfranchised by unelected school boards. 　
As Barber predicted, “What begins as an assault on bureaucratic rigidity becomes an assault on government and all things public … (destroying) a people’s right to govern themselves publicly … (and) to establish the conditions for the development of public citizens.” Reforms that gut public education attack democracy.

You will enjoy reading the full article, which appeared in the Stamford Advocate. Lecker goes into detail about the ways that charter schools are draining resources from public schools and causing fiscal distress to schools that accept all students.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Education Industry, Funding, Inequity, Injustice

Purdue Buys Online, For-Profit Kaplan, Over Faculty Objections University

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2017 //
13

Mitch Daniels, former governor of Indiana, is now president of Purdue, a soft landing for a politician with no academic bona fides. He has continued his assault on the academic integrity of the university by arranging the purchase of online “Kaplan University,” a for-profit business built on test prep.

The University Senate passed a resolution opposing this move, and Daniels said they felt bad about being left out of the decision-making process. Purdue paid $1 for the flailing online business.

Read about the deal in the Washington Post here:

Read today’s Politico education edition for more on this story.

Text of Faculty Senate resolution:

To: From:
Subject: Disposition:
Whereas,
Senate Document 16-19 4 May 2017
Purdue University Senate
Senators Alan Beck, Tithi Bhattacharya, Evelyn Blackwood, Elena Coda, Cheryl Cooky, Alan Friedman, Alberto Rodriguez, and Laurel Weldon
Resolution on the Purdue Purchase of Kaplan University University Senate for Discussion & Approval
Faculty governance and faculty control of curriculum are the lifeblood of any healthy University.
As, unfortunately, the unique nature of the announced purchase by Purdue of Kaplan University resulted in a violation of both of those central tenets.
1. No input was sought through regular faculty governance before this decision was made.
2. No assessment of the impact on the academic quality of Purdue, now or in the future, was made.
3. No transparency was demonstrated in this process.
4. No impact study has been taken of effects on faculty, curriculum, students and staff at Purdue.
5. Faculty governance and academic freedom at what will become the “New University” is not assured by the Purdue agreement with Kaplan.
6. The Faculty has already requested, in writing, that the administration use the Senate’s Academic Organization Committee when considering any re-structuring of programs or the creation of new ones at any campus.

Be it resolved that

Based on these violations of both common sense educational practice and respect for the Purdue faculty, we call on the President and Board of Trustees to include faculty in all aspects of decision-making regarding the proposed “New University” and to rescind any decisions, to the degree possible, made without faculty input.

Sponsors:
Alan Beck, Tithi Bhattacharya, Evelyn Blackwood, Elena Coda, Cheryl Cooky, Alan Friedman, Alberto Rodriguez, Laurel Weldon

In the Politico report this morning, you will also learn there about the Trump administration’s efforts to tamp down the fears that Trump was preparing to cut off capital funding of HBCUs, in grounds of “equal opportunity” (no favoritism based on race), which he seemed to imply in a recent signing statement.

Watch for Betsy DeVos’s commencement address at historically black Bethune-Cookman University in Florida on Wednesday. Undoubtedly she will praise the virtues of school choice since that is her only thought.

Categories Betsy DeVos, For-Profit, Funding, Higher Education

Pennsylvania: How the State’s Charter Law Cripples Public Schools

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2017 //
4

I don’t begin to understand the complexities of Pennsylvania’s formula for allocating dollars to public schools and charter schools, but this article explains how the formula cripples public schools.

Chester Upland School District keeps raising taxes to overcome its deficit but it can’t keep up.

Chester Upland spends about $16,000 a year on average for each special ed student in its traditional district schools. But the state’s formula has forced it to pay more than $40,000 per student to charters, regardless of the child’s level of disability.

Those payments crippled Chester Upland so badly that Gov. Tom Wolf and the courts stepped in.

But this is far from just an issue in Chester Upland. Newly analyzed state data show that a combination of quirks in the charter law have caused a statewide problem, because charters across Pennsylvania are enrolling a greater share of the least needy, least costly special ed students.

The special ed funding formula’s intricacies are infamous. But the problem in a nutshell is this: when the neediest students concentrate in district schools, that drives up the per-pupil payments that districts must pay charters.

It’s a paradox that can drain the budgets of traditional school districts while infusing charters with cash. And it creates incentives for districts like Chester Upland to do what they can to keep special ed students from migrating to charters and cyber-charters.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Pennsylvania, Privatization, Special Education

How Trump “Got Rolled” in His First Budget Negotiation

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2017 //
17

It is probably not a good idea to brag that you are the world’s best negotiator when your only experience was in the real estate world. Apparently those skills do not transfer to government, where you have to deal with wily veterans of both parties and a complex set of procedural rules that you do not know.

Democrats and Republicans agreed on a budget to avert a shutdown, and Trump didn’t get anything he asked for.

The budget doesn’t include a deep cut for the Environmental Protection Agency; not one job will be lost.

Trump wanted to cut the National Institutes of Health, but it didn’t happen.

The budget maintains funding for Planned Parenthood.

There is no funding for a border wall.

Read the story and understand that the real estate negotiator’s skill set doesn’t work in D.C., where a knowledge of legislative history helps, as well as personal relationships, and some sense of the importance of the programs that are funded.

Trump’s first lesson in Washington, D.C., is that he can’t go it alone; he needs to work with other people. He was not elected to be a dictator or autocrat. That’s very different from being the owner of a private firm where your decisions override the wishes of everyone else.

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding, Trump

Write a Letter to Your Representative in Congress to Protect Federal Education Funding!

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2017 //
5

Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters, sent out the following bulletin:

It was just revealed that Congress is due to vote on an education budget early this week which would cut Title IIA funds by $300 million. President Trump’s budget would eliminate these funds altogether for the following year.

Please write Congress today: Urge them NOT to cut Title IIA funds – which many districts use to keep teachers on staff to prevent further class size increases. In NYC, $101 million of these funds are used to keep approximately 1000 teachers on staff.

As I explained in a recent piece in Alternet, districts throughout the country have already lost thousands of teaching positions since the Great Recession which were never replaced — increasing class sizes in many schools to sky-high levels.

For more on the myriad, proven benefits of smaller classes, check out our research summary here. But please write to Congress today by clicking here.

Thanks!

Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
124 Waverly Pl.
New York, NY 10011

Categories Budget Cuts, Class size, Funding, Trump
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