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New York: Victory for Parents and Children in Court!

By dianeravitch
March 27, 2017 //
6

EDUCATION LAW CENTER

NEW YORK APPEALS COURT ORDERS CUOMO ADMINISTRATION TO RELEASE SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT GRANTS

In a major victory for parents, a New York appeals court has ordered the State Division of Budget to immediately release over $37 million in improvement grants to 20 needy schools across the state. A year ago, the grants were frozen by Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Budget Director, Robert Mujica, triggering a lawsuit by parents of students in three of the affected schools.

“I am most happy for the children who would benefit from these funds as it shows them that there are people other than their parents who care about their future,” said Curtis Witters, a parent plaintiff in the lawsuit. “I hope the schools will utilize these funds to help our students be as successful and progressive as possible.”

Education Law Center represents the parents of students in the three schools: Hackett Middle School in Albany, Roosevelt High School in Yonkers, and JHS 80 Moshulo Parkway Middle School in the Bronx.

In an order issued today, the appeals court “vacated,” or lifted, a “stay” of a December 28, 2016, decision by Judge Kimberly O’Connor in Albany finding Mr. Mujica had acted illegally in withholding the grants. Judge O’Connor directed the Budget Director to immediately release the impounded grant funds.

An appeal of by the Cuomo Administration triggered an automatic stay of Judge O’Connor’s ruling. The parents then asked the appeals court to lift the stay, citing the urgent need to release the funds so needed programs could be implemented in the upcoming (2017-18) school year. Today’s order clears the way for the funds to be released so the schools can begin their planning process.

“We are pleased the Appellate Division ordered the immediate release of the grant funds,” said Wendy Lecker, ELC Senior Attorney. “These grants were frozen illegally, forcing the schools to discontinue vital academic and support services in the current school year. These schools can now plan to restore these programs to improve performance and help their students succeed.”

“Mr. Mujica had no legal basis for impounding these grants in the first place,” said ELC Executive Director David Sciarra. “It’s tragic that the Cuomo Administration would waste time and money to defend their illegal action in court, rather than working cooperatively with local educators to improve outcomes for vulnerable children.”

In addition to vacating the stay, the appeals court also granted the parents’ motion to expedite consideration of the merits of the appeal, placing it on the court’s May 2017 calendar.

For more information about Cortes v. Mujica, visit these pages on the Education Law Center website.

Education Law Center Press Contact:
Sharon Krengel
Policy and Outreach Director
skrengel@edlawcenter.org
973-624-1815, x 24

Categories Accountability, Cuomo, Andrew, Funding, New York

Jeff Bryant: The Big Lie Behind Trump’s Budget Proposals for Education

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2017 //
13

Jeff Bryant spells out the Big Lie embedded in Trump’s budget proposal for education. He plans to cut programs that directly aid poor kids while bolstering charters and vouchers, pretending they are equivalent. They are not. Yet much of the mainstream media has fallen for the Trump-DeVos bait-and-switch.

“Public school supporters are angry at President Trump’s budget proposal, which plans to cut funding to the Department of Education by 13 percent – taking that department’s outlay down to the level it was ten years ago. But the target for their anger should not be just the extent of the cuts but also how the cuts are being pitched to the public.

“Trump’s education budget cuts are aimed principally at federal programs that serve poor kids, especially their access to afterschool programs and high-quality teachers.

“At the same time, Trump’s spending blueprint calls for pouring $1.4 billion into school choice policies including a $168 million increase for charter schools, $250 million for a new school choice program focused on private schools, and a $1 billion increase for parents to send their kids to private schools at taxpayer expense.

“The way the Trump administration is spinning this combination of funding cuts and increases – and the way nearly every news outlet is reporting them – is that there is some sort of strategically important balance between funding programs for poor kids versus “school choice” schemes, as if the two are equivalents and just different means to the same ends. Nothing could be further from the truth….

“The message being spun out of Trump’s education budget is that it takes money away from those awful “adult interests” – like, you know, teachers to actually teach the students and buildings so students have somewhere to go after school to play sports, get tutored, or engage in music and art projects – in order to steer money to “the kids” who will get a meager sum of money to search for learning opportunities in an education system that is increasingly bereft of teachers and buildings.

“Even competent education reporters are falling for this spin, writing that education policy is experiencing a “sea change in focus from fixing the failing schools to helping the students in the failing schools.”

“However, there’s evidence that federally funded efforts like afterschool programs and class size reduction tend to lead to better academic results for low-income children, while the case for using school choice programs to address the education needs of poor kids is pretty weak.

“The Weak Case For Choice

“School voucher programs, like the ones Trump and DeVos seem intent on funding, are particularly ineffective ways to address the education problems of poor kids. Indeed, these programs seem to not serve the interests of poor kids at all.

“Studies of voucher programs In Wisconsin, Indiana, Arizona, and Nevada have found that most of the money from the programs goes to parents wealthy enough to already have their children enrolled in private schools.

“Voucher programs rarely provide enough money to enable poor minority children to get access to the best private schools. And a new comprehensive study of vouchers finds evidence that vouchers don’t significantly improve student achievement. What they do pose is greater likelihood that students who are the most costly and difficult to educate – low-income kids and children with special needs – will be turned away or pushed out by private schools that are not obligated to serve all students.

“Charter schools, another program the Trump budget wants to ramp up funding for, also don’t have a great track record for improving the education attainment of low-income students.

“Perhaps the best case made for using charter schools to target the needs of low-income students comes from a study on the impact of charters in urban school systems conducted by research outfit CREDO in 2015. The study indeed found evidence of some positive impact of charters in these communities. But as my colleague at The Progressive Julian Vasquez Heilig points out, the measures of improvement, in standard deviations, are .008 for Latino students and .05 for African American students in charter schools.

“These numbers are larger than zero,” Heilig writes on his personal blog, “but you need a magnifying glass to see them. Contrast that outcome with policies such as pre-K and class size reduction which are far more unequivocal measures of success than charter schools. They have 400 percent to 1000 percent more statistical impact than charters.”

“Indeed, choice programs in all their forms, at least in how they are being promoted by the Trump administration and its supporters, seem more interested in diverting money away from public schools than they are intent on delivering some sort of education relief to the struggles of poor families.”

School choice will actually harm children by diverting money from public schools that now enroll 90% of America’s students to provide choices for a few children. Most of those choices will be for schools with uncertified teachers and a Bible-based curriculum.

This may satisfy billionaire Betsy DeVos but it won’t be good for children.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Lies, Poverty, School Choice, Vouchers

Allen Weeks: Our Texas Schools Are Broken, It’s Time for a Change

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2017 //
17

Allen Weeks writes in the Austin American-Statesman that Texas schools are broken. They are desperately underfunded by a legislature that cut $5.4 billion from the state school budget in 2011. When the economy improved, instead of restoring the money they took from the schools, they cut business taxes. Now, the leadership thinks they can substitute vouchers and choice for the damage done by budget cuts. The courts in Texas say the legislature is wrong. So does common sense.

“Last year, the Texas Supreme Court called our state’s school funding system awful, inadequate and basically a mess – yet still ruled that it met some minimum standard for Texas students. When I asked one legislator to explain this, he said that only three or four people in Texas understood the school finance system — and he wasn’t one of them. Another legislator told me that it’s not about the funding, because if a teacher is good, he or she could just teach “under an ol’ shade tree.” Neither conversation inspired confidence.

I’ve talked with many Texans about school funding, and here’s what they say:

• We underfund Texas schools.

• The system for sharing it is totally screwed up.

• Property taxes are way too high.

“So let’s sit together under the shade tree and examine these points.

“Not enough funding. You need more than a shade tree to prepare students for today’s economy. But if you get what you pay for, Texas is clearly shortchanging its future.

“In 2011, Texas cut $5.4 billion from public education that was never fully restored. Since 2006, statewide enrollment has increased by 16.8 percent, though funding increases lag at 7.4 percent. In 2015, the state cut business and other taxes by $4 billion, resulting in a self-made budget crisis this session. With possible federal budget cuts looming, the situation for Texas students is dire.

“Texas is 43rd in the country in per-pupil funding, though it invests heavily in incarceration. Massachusetts is similar to Texas in student diversity, immigration and other demographics, but its superior investment in education — seventh from the top — has paid off with the nation’s highest academic ranking and one of the lowest incarceration rates. If we’re to stay competitive, Texas can and must do better.”

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Privatization, Texas

Betsy DeVos’s Super PAC Contributed to Defeat of Teacher Candidates in Oklahoma

By dianeravitch
March 23, 2017 //
29

In Oklahoma, the public schools are under-funded, and teachers are buying their own supplies in many schools. Last fall, a number of teachers ran for legislative seats. Needless to say, none of them was lavishly funded. But their opponents had the backing of Betsy DeVos’ American Federation for Children. How AFC can be “for” children when they oppose funding their schools and paying their teachers a decent salary is a mystery.

Oklahoma Watch reports that DeVos’ AFC PAC contributed at least $180,000 to defeat teachers running for the legislature.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Funding, Oklahoma, Teacher Pay

California Teachers Form Statewide Alliance to Fight for Real School Reform

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2017 //
29

Teachers organizations from across the state of California have formed an alliance to fight for genuine School reform.

CALIFORNIA: 8 Teacher Union Locals Unite Against the Trump/DeVos Agenda, Fight for Public Schools through Collective Bargaining, Community Power

United around common struggles and a shared vision, The California Alliance for Community Schools is a groundbreaking coalition of educator unions from 8 of the largest cities in California, representing more than 50,000 educators. The alliance officially launches tomorrow, Thursday March 23 and includes: Anaheim Secondary Teachers Association, Oakland Education Association, San Bernardino Teachers Association, San Jose Teachers Association, San Diego Education Association, United Educators of San Francisco, United Teachers Los Angeles and United Teachers Richmond.

All 8 unions are uniting around statewide demands, through local bargaining as well as legislation, for more resources in schools, charter school accountability, lower class sizes and other critical improvements. Most of the locals are in contract bargaining or are interested in organizing around these key issues. The alliance plans to expand to include other labor and community partners.

As California faces a statewide teacher shortage, school districts issued more than 1,750 pink slips for educators last week. Trump released his proposed federal budget, which slashes funds for disadvantaged children, afterschool programs, teacher trainings and other vital services. Trump wants to spend $1.4 billion to expand vouchers, including private schools, and would pay for it from deep cuts to public schools. Voters in California have twice rejected voucher plans.

“We are reaching a state of emergency when it comes to our public schools,” said Hilda Rodriguez-Guzman, an Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment member and charter school parent since 1994. “We must support and reinvest in public education. I join educators in the fight for well-resourced, transparent, accountable, and democratically run schools, at the bargaining table and beyond.”

All 8 unions will use the power of bargaining and statewide organizing to fight for:

Lower class sizes

Resources for high-needs schools and students

Shared decision-making at local school sites, critical to student success

Charter school accountability

Safe and supportive school environments

The first significant step is the launch of the bargaining platform and petition, which includes statewide demands and specific contract demands for each local union. The petition reads:

“As educators in large urban school districts across California we face many of the same challenges. We are particularly concerned about disinvestment in schools and communities, especially those with the greatest needs; educational policies that discourage authentic teaching and learning; and the rapid expansion of privately managed and unregulated charter schools at the expense of our neighborhood schools.”

We applaud the work of these unions, who are fighting back the Trump/DeVos agenda and standing together with their students and communities to reinvest in public education.

To find out more, contact each union for more information:

Anaheim: Grant Schuster, CTA State Council Representative on ASTA Executive Board, schusters3@charter.net, (562) 810-4035

Los Angeles: Anna Bakalis, UTLA Communications Director mailto:abakalis@utla.net, (213)305-9654

Oakland: Trish Gorham, OEA President, oaklandeapresident@yahoo.com, (510) 763-4020,

San Diego: Jonathon Mello, mello_j@sdea.net, (619) 200-0010

San Francisco: Mathew Hardy, Communications Director, mhardy@uesf.org, (415) 513-3179

Richmond: Demetrio Gonzalez, UTR President, president@unitedteachersofrichmond.com, (760) 500-7044

San Jose: Jennifer Thomas, SJTA President, jthomas@sanjoseta.org, (408) 694-7393

San Bernardino: Ashley Alcalá, SBTA President, ashleysbta@gmail.com, (909) 881-6755
—

THE CALIFORNIA ALLIANCE FOR COMMUNITY SCHOOLS
We are a coalition of California parents, community, educators, and students united in our commitment to transforming public education in ways that contribute to a more just, equitable, and participatory society.

Together, we are fighting for well-resourced, community-centered, publicly funded and democratically run schools that prepare our students with the intellectual, social, and emotional skills necessary for success in a changing and often turbulent world.

Our Platform for The Schools All Our Students Deserve

1. Low Class Sizes: Quality instruction for all our students depends on limiting the number of students in a class. Lowering class sizes improves teaching and learning conditions leading to growth in student achievement and positive social interactions.

2. Adequate Resources for All Schools with Additional Resources for Our High Needs Schools and Students: All schools and students deserve adequate levels of funding and support, including but not limited to quality early childhood education programs, lower class size, lower Special Education caseloads, additional educators, after-school tutoring, counselors, nurses, certificated librarians, and other resources to address our students’ academic, emotional, and social needs. Schools and students with the highest need should receive additional funding and support. Site based governing bodies consisting of democratically selected staff, parents, students, and community partners should be responsible for deciding how such additional supports are to be used.

3. Shared Decision-Making at Our Local Schools: The needs of a school are best addressed by the members of the school community. Site based governance by democratically selected stakeholder representatives is a critical component for school and student success. Districts and unions should provide joint trainings to fully empower these bodies.

4. Charter Schools Accountable to Our Communities: All schools receiving public money must be held accountable and be locally and publicly controlled. Unfortunately, many privately run, under-regulated charter schools drain needed resources from neighborhood schools, are not fully transparent in their operations, and fail to provide equal access to all students. Common sense standards and adequate oversight are necessary. New charter schools should not be approved without ensuring accountability and transparency and without a comprehensive assessment of the economic and educational impact on existing public schools.

5. Safe and Supportive School Environments: All students at publicly funded schools, regardless of ethnicity, gender, economic status, religion, sexual orientation, and immigration status, have a right to an academically stimulating, emotionally and socially nurturing, and culturally responsive environment that recognizes and addresses the many stresses that affect student performance and behavior. Adequate trainings and supports for restorative justice programs must be provided as an alternative to punitive disciplinary programs.

Categories Arts Education, Budget Cuts, California, Class size, Early Childhood Education, Funding, Real Education, Teacher Shortage, Teachers, Unions

Arkansas: Voucher Bill Fails in Legislature

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2017 //
8

Vouchers, also known as education savings accounts and tax credits, failed in the lower house of the state legislature in Arkansas.

The legislator who sponsored the bill hails from Bentonville, the home of the Walton Family (Walmart) corporation.

Given the accumulation of research showing the failure of vouchers in Milwaukee, Cleveland, D.C., Louisiana, Indiana, and Ohio, you have to wonder why Tea Party Republicans are still pushing the same phony claims.

House Bill 1222 by Rep. Jim Dotson, R-Bentonville, received 37 votes in support and 47 votes against in the House. The bill would create a four-year pilot program allowing the establishment of “education savings accounts” that parents could use for certain expenses related to a child’s education, including tuition, fees, textbooks, tutoring services and contracted services with a public school district.

Under the measure, people and companies could donate to nonprofit organizations and, starting in the program’s second year, receive a 65 percent tax credit. The total tax credits provided in the second, third and fourth years of the program could not exceed $3 million per year.

The donations could fund accounts for up to 694 students. Each year, an account would be worth an amount equal to the state’s per-student spending on public education, which for this school year is $6,646.

Families could apply for the accounts regardless of whether they make donations.

Opponents of the bill knew that it was a voucher bill, that the limits were only an opening bid, and that the vouchers would do grievous damage to their community’s public schools.

Legislators who spoke against the bill raised concerns about accountability, fairness, the impact on public schools and implications for the future.

“Right now there is this train going down the track, and while it’s going at a slow pace, it stands to pick up pace and we stand to sooner or later become a voucher community, with those vouchers destroying public schools while the public schools decay and are not being improved,” said Rep. John Walker, D-Little Rock.

The camel put its nose under the tent, and the majority of legislators kicked the whole darn critter out of there.

Way to go, Arkansas!

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Funding, Supporting public schools, Vouchers

Trump’s Budget Plan Lifted from Inside-the-Beltway Heritage Foundation

By dianeravitch
March 17, 2017 //
42

Hat tip to Bill Moyers’ website for this article in The Intercept:

Zaid Jilani reports in The Intercepr that Trump’s budget is copied from the Swamp-dwelling, Establishment, Beltway right wing Heritage Foundation.

Trump the Outsider Outsources His Budget to Insider Think Tank

Nothing in the budget protects the blue-collar and rural people who voted for him. Instead, they are likely to be hit hard by cuts to federal programs they rely on.

The only complaint of the Heritage Foundation is that Trump didn’t add enough billions to defense.

Unless they join the military, Trump voters are shafted along with the rest of us.

The Heritage Foundation has always spoken for corporations and the uber-rich.

Jilani writes:

“PRESIDENT TRUMP’S BUDGET proposal, released on Thursday, echoes none of the populist, anti-establishment themes of candidate Trump’s campaign for higher office. Instead, it calls for a large increase in defense spending while reducing spending for a variety of popular domestic programs.

“That’s not surprising considering where those ideas came from. Rather than bringing in new ideas from outside of the Beltway, many of its proposals are lifted straight from the recommendations of an elite ultra-conservative D.C. think tank: the Heritage Foundation.

“Founded in 1973, Heritage has served as a sort of a watering hole for the Republican establishment, providing policy papers and staffers for GOP members of Congress and presidential administrations. Its 2015 annual report listed almost $100 million in revenues — drawn from conservative mega-donors and corporations — which it uses to facilitate the spread of its ideas across Washington, D.C.

“And those ideas have found a home in the Trump administration, which leaned heavily on Heritage advice during the transition period. Many of the White House proposal’s ideas are identical to a budget blueprint Heritage drew up last year.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding, Trump

Mercedes Schneider on Trump’s Budget: Our First Anti-Education President

By dianeravitch
March 17, 2017 //
19

Count on Mercedes Schneider to review Trump’s budget proposal.

It is as bad as you heard.

She says, “At least he doesn’t call himself an ‘education president.'”

True, he is the anti-education president.

He is the first who wants to tear down public education, not improve it.

He does not want to invest in our children or our future.

He is an enemy of the people.

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization, School Choice, Trump, Vouchers

If Federal Funding for Corporation for Public Broadcasting is Enacted, the Public Media System Will Collapse

By dianeravitch
March 17, 2017 //
8

Media experts warned that the elimination of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will bring an end to public media in small and rural communities. The giants in large markets like New York City will survive, but not the smaller markets.

“Public radio and television broadcasters are girding for battle after the Trump administration proposed a drastic cutback that they have long dreaded: the defunding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

“The potential elimination of about $445 million in annual funding, which helps local TV and radio stations subscribe to NPR and Public Broadcasting Service programming, could be devastating for affiliates in smaller markets that already operate on a shoestring budget.

“Patricia Harrison, the corporation’s president, warned in a statement on Thursday that the Trump budget proposal, if enacted, could cause “the collapse of the public media system itself.”

“But the power players in public broadcasting — big-city staples like WNYC in New York City — would be well-equipped to weather any cuts. Major stations typically receive only a sliver of their annual budget from the federal government, thanks to listener contributions and corporate underwriters. Podcasts and other digital offshoots have also become significant sources of revenue.

“Rural affiliates, however, rely more heavily on congressional largess, which can make up as much as 35 percent of their budgets. Mark Vogelzang, president of Maine Public, called the Trump proposal “the most serious threat to our federal funding” since he started in public broadcasting 37 years ago.

“We’re always living on the edge in this ecosystem of public broadcasting,” Mr. Vogelzang said in an interview.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting supports about 1,500 stations that carry a range of educational, journalistic and arts-related programming. The corporation dates to the administration of President Lyndon Johnson. Its funding, while a minuscule part of the federal budget, has been under regular peril since the 1970s from conservative lawmakers, who often denounce what they view as the liberal bent of public media.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding, Media, Trump

Scholars Ask: Are Charter Schools the New Enron?

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2017 //
17

Scholars Preston C. Green III, Bruce D. Baker, and Joseph Oluwole investigate whether the charter industry is repeating the errors of Enron.

Their peer-reviewed article appears in the Indiana Law Journal.

Here is the abstract:

“In 2001, Enron rocked the financial world by declaring bankruptcy due to the effects of an accounting scandal. Special purpose entities (SPEs) were instrumental to Enron’s demise. Enron parked assets in the SPEs to improve its credit rating.

“Enron violated accounting principles by not revealing that its SPE partnerships were related-party transactions. Andrew Fastow, who was Enron’s CFO, made millions of dollars by managing the SPEs. He also used these illegal proceeds to invest in other ventures. Enron’s gatekeepers failed to protect against this accounting fraud.

“Related-party transactions are now posing a threat to the charter school sector. Similar to Fastow, individuals are using their control over charter schools and their affiliates to obtain unreasonable management fees and funnel public funds into other business ventures.

“In this article, we discuss how some charter school officials have engaged in Enron-like related-party transactions. We also identify several measures that can be taken to strengthen the ability of charter school gatekeepers to protect against this danger.

“This article is divided into four parts. Part I describes how Fastow used his management of Enron and the SPEs to obtain illegal profits. Part II discusses why financial sector gatekeepers failed to stop these related-party transactions. Part III shows how charter school officials are benefitting from their control over charter schools and their affiliates in a manner similar to Fastow. Part IV analyzes pertinent statutory and regulatory provisions to identify steps that can be taken to increase the gatekeepers’ ability to protect against harmful related-party transactions.”

Categories Charter Schools, For-Profit, Fraud, Funding
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