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Peter Greene: Betsy Drew the Wrong Lesson from the Failure of Obama and Duncan

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2017 //
17

Peter Greene read Betsy DeVos’s speech to CPAC and realized that she totally misunderstood why Obama and Duncan’s reforms failed. It wasn’t because they spent money. It was because they spent money on bad ideas. Now she proposes to spend money on vouchers, which have failed miserably, and on charters, which Obama and Duncan promoted. What is new about her approach? She is candid: she wants to destroy public education. Obama and Duncan either believed or pretended that public education would get better because of high-stakes testing, punishments, and charter schools. They were wrong. DeVos is wrong too. The difference is that we already know she is wrong, but she doesn’t.

Greene writes:

“School improvement grants were like food stamps that could only be spent on baby formula, ostrich eggs, and venison—and it didn’t matter if the families receiving the stamps lived on a farm with fresh milk and chicken eggs, or if they were vegetarians, or if they lived where no store sells ostrich eggs, or if there were no babies in the family. The Department of Education used the grants to dictate strategy and buy compliance with their micro-managing notions about how schools had to be fixed.

“As with many classic reform moves, plenty of folks on the ground level could have told the reformers what was wrong with their plan. But as DeVos’s comments show, the damage of School Improvement Grants is not only in wasted money, it’s also in convicting the wrong suspect and discrediting a whole reform approach.

“DeVos and other conservative reformers are taking the real lesson of the grant program’s failure: “spending money on the wrong thing for schools doesn’t help,” and shortening it to a far more damaging assessment: “spending money on schools doesn’t help.”

“The Obama-Duncan-King program didn’t just fail, they say, but it also helped discredit the whole idea of funding schools at all. Thanks Obama.”

Given the miserable failure of school choice in Michigan and Detroit, you would think DeVos was open to reflecting on the error of her ideas. But don’t make that mistake. Her ideas of school “reform” are based on ideology and theology. They won’t change. They can’t be proved or disproved. They are set in stone. Evidence doesn’t matter.

If allowed to do her wishes, public schools will be defunded (they are “godless”), unions will disappear, for-profit entrepreneurs will cash in, and a million weeds will bloom.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Funding, Obama, Privatization, Race to the Top, Vouchers

Education Law Center: America’s Most Fiscally Disadvantaged School Districts

By dianeravitch
February 24, 2017 //
10

The Education Law Center lists the most fiscally distressed districts in the nation. You will note that one of them is Shelby County, Tennessee, where the Gates Foundation and Stand for Children expended a great deal of effort to introduce charters and district consolidation as a mini-bandaid to the district’s financial problems. The Gates Foundation paid to bring in the Boston Consulting Group to offer advice a few years back on merging districts, not on how to solve its fiscal problems. The Gates Foundation gave Shelby County a grant of $90 million over seven years to improve teacher quality. Yet Gates never addressed the basic fiscal disadvantage of the district. Presumably he thought that if he could VAM the teachers, then the test scores would go up, and the district’s budget would not matter. But it does matter. Once again, the Gates Foundation proved that it addresses the wrong problems and diverts attention from the need for a fair tax code that would reduce the billions accumulated by people like Bill Gates!

ELC RELEASES 2017 LIST OF NATION’S MOST FISCALLY DISADVANTAGED SCHOOL DISTRICTS

47 Districts in 20 States

Education Law Center released today the 2017 list of the most financially strapped public school districts in the nation. The 2017 list includes 47 school districts in 20 states, with every region of the country represented. Over 1.5 million children are educated in these districts, attending underfunded schools under severe fiscal distress.

The report – “America’s Most Fiscally Disadvantaged School Districts” &#45 identifies school districts across the country with higher than average student need and lower than average funding when compared to other districts in their regional labor market.

“A district’s funding level relative to other districts in the same labor market is perhaps the most important factor in whether schools have the resources they need, including effective teachers,” said Dr. Bruce Baker of the Rutgers Graduate School of Education and a co-author of the report. “School districts must compete for teachers and support staff, the largest share of any district’s budget. Districts are fiscally disadvantaged if they don’t have the funding to offer competitive wages and comparable working conditions relative to nearby districts and other professions.”

Among the report’s key findings are:

Sumter, South Carolina, and Shelby County, Tennessee, face extreme fiscal conditions, with nearly 3 times area poverty rates and less than 84 and 83 percent, respectively, of the average state and local revenue per pupil. School funding levels in Tennessee and South Carolina are among the lowest in the nation.

Reading and Allentown, Pennsylvania, are also in extreme distress, with nearly 2.5 times area poverty rates and below 80 percent of the average state and local revenue per pupil.

Chicago and Philadelphia are again the most fiscally disadvantaged large urban districts in the nation. Illinois and Pennsylvania have a highly regressive school funding systems, marked by wide funding disparities between low and high poverty districts.

California has the highest number of fiscally disadvantaged districts.

Massachusetts has a relatively progressive funding system, but Lowell is severely disadvantaged with a poverty rate 2.6 times higher than surrounding areas and only 83 percent of the average state and local revenue per pupil.

Connecticut has four districts on the list, while Michigan and Arizona have three fiscally disadvantaged districts.
“These findings again show that Governors and Legislatures in far too many states stubbornly resist investing in K &#45 12 education so all children have the resources needed to succeed in school,” said David Sciarra, ELC Executive Director and a report co-author. “The states with districts on this list chronically underfund their poorest schools, leaving behind thousands of vulnerable children. This is our national hall of shame.”

America’s Most Fiscally Disadvantaged School Districts is a companion report to Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card. For the complete Report Card, please visit: http://www.schoolfundingfairness.org

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

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Funding, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization

What I Said in Texas

By dianeravitch
February 10, 2017 //
18

On Monday, I was in Commerce, Texas, to speak at Texas A&M’s campus there. I met some wonderful Texans and was treated royally by President Ray Keck and Vice President Noah Nelson.

I had a Q&A with the education faculty, then had an interview with the local NPR station, then lectured to the campus community.

The big issue in Texas right now is that Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is pushing for vouchers. I explained that vouchers have consistently failed and that they will draw resources from the public schools that most children attend, which are already underfunded.

This link has the short interview and a summary of my talk.

http://ketr.org/post/diane-ravitch-texas-senate-bill-means-less-money-public-schools

Categories Funding, Texas, Vouchers

Barbara Miner: If You Care about Public Schools and Democracy, Beware of DeVos’ Vouchers

By dianeravitch
February 10, 2017 //
27

Barbara Miner is a veteran journalist based in Milwaukee, where she writes often about the stat’s disastrous voucher plan. In 2013, she published a book called “Lessons from the Heartland: A Turbulent Half-Century of Public Education in an Iconic American City.”

In this article in the Los Angeles Times, Miner warns that the public must keep watch on DeVos because her goal is to legitimize vouchers for religious schools across the nation.

She warns:

“DeVos, now confirmed as secretary of Education, is not just another inexperienced member of the president’s Cabinet. She is an ideologue with a singular educational passion — replacing our system of democratically controlled public schools with a universal voucher program that privileges private and religious ones.

“If you care about our public schools and our democracy, you should be worried.”

Miner describes how Milwaukee and Wisconsin were taken in by bait and switch.

“Milwaukee’s program began in 1990, when the state Legislature passed a bill allowing 300 students in seven nonsectarian private schools to receive taxpayer-funded tuition vouchers. It was billed as a small, low-cost experiment to help poor black children, and had a five-year sunset clause.

“That was the bait. The first “switch” came a few weeks later, when the Republican governor eliminated the sunset clause. Ever since, vouchers have been a divisive yet permanent fixture in Wisconsin.

“Conservatives have consistently expanded the program, especially when Republicans controlled the state government. (Vouchers have never been put to a public vote in Wisconsin.) Today, some 33,000 students in 212 schools receive publicly funded vouchers, not just in Milwaukee but throughout Wisconsin. If it were its own school district, the voucher program would be the state’s second largest. The overwhelming majority of the schools are religious.

“Voucher schools are private schools that have applied for a state-funded program that pays tuition for some or all of its student body. Even if every single student at a school receives a publicly funded voucher, as is the case in 22 of Milwaukee’s schools, that school is still defined as private.

“Because they are defined as “private,” voucher schools operate by separate rules, with minimal public oversight or transparency. They can sidestep basic constitutional protections such as freedom of speech. They do not have to provide the same level of second-language or special-education services. They can suspend or expel students without legal due process. They can ignore the state’s requirements for open meetings and records. They can disregard state law prohibiting discrimination against students on grounds of sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, or marital or parental status.”

Since 1990, the people of Wisconsin have paid more than $2 billion for vouchers, mostly to religious institutions. This has been an expensive experiment.

“Privatizing an essential public function and forcing the public to pay for it, even while removing it from meaningful public oversight, weakens our democracy.”

Categories Betsy DeVos, Funding, Milwaukee, Privatization, Vouchers, Wisconsin

Steven Singer: Why Are So Many Democrats in Pennsylvania Supporting Vouchers?

By dianeravitch
February 7, 2017 //
32

It is baffling that there is a sector of the Democratic Party that aligns with far-right Republicans on education issues. The Republicans want nothing more than to turn education into a free market, a strategy that has no evidence behind it.

Steven Singer bemoans the fact that a group of Democratic legislators in his state of Pennsylvania are supporting the Republican push against public schools.

He writes:

“Democrats are supposed to be liberals, progressives.

“That means upholding the Constitution and the Separation of Church and State.

“So why are so many Pennsylvania Democrats sponsoring an expansion of the state’s de facto school voucher bill?

“A total of 11 out of 84 sponsors of HB 250 are Democrats. The bill would expand the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) and Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit (OSTC) programs.

“The Commonwealth already diverts $200 million of business taxes to private and parochial schools. That’s money that should be going to support our struggling public school system.

“The new bill would add $50 million to each program for a total of $100 million more flushed down the drain.

“Pennsylvania has a budget deficit. We’ve cut almost $1 billion a year from public schools. We can’t afford to burn an additional $300 million on private and church schools.

“We expect Republicans to support this regressive nonsense. Especially in gerrymandered Pennsylvania, they’ve gone further and further right to please their Tea Party base and avoid being primaried.

“But the few Democrats left in the House and Senate are likewise in districts that would never vote Republican. You’d expect them to get more and more progressive. Instead, even here we see them taking steps to the right!

“Democratic sponsors of the bill are almost exclusively from the state’s urban centers – Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.”

He lists the Democrats who support corporate giveaways.

Don’t vote for them.

Categories Budget Cuts, Democrats, Funding, Hoax, Pennsylvania, Privatization, Vouchers

Phyllis Bush: The Expensive Hoax of Vouchers

By dianeravitch
February 3, 2017 //
24

Phyllis Bush is a retired educator and a member of the board of the Network for Public Education who lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

She writes here about the hidden cost of vouchers, which are a gift of public dollars to private schools with no accountability.

Here is an excerpt:

Vouchers drain state tax dollars from the entire education funding pot. This often causes district budgeting deficits and/or the need for tax increases, referendums and the like. That loss of revenue to public schools increases class sizes and diminishes student resources such as counselors, support personnel, supplemental materials and buses.

From the vantage point of a traditional public school supporter, vouchers are a gift of taxpayer funds given to private schools without any accountability. Additionally, the expansion of choice is creating two separate school systems. In this parallel system, one pathway will be for those who can afford quality choices. The other pathway will be to an underfunded, separate-but-unequal road, marked by poverty and by zip codes. As most people know, public schools are required to accept all students while “choice schools” have the option of choosing the students who fit their agenda. Choice schools are allowed to reject students with behavior issues, students with low scores, students with disabilities, and students who don’t speak English.

The probable result of this further expansion of choice schools will be that the children with the most difficulties will be housed in the least well-financed schools. Sadly, many legislators have chosen to be willfully unaware of the consequences of “school choice.”

While the reformers and the takeover artists and the hedge fund managers talk and talk and talk about the miraculous results of school choice, research shows that these results are uneven at best. As thoughtful citizens and taxpayers, wouldn’t it be prudent if we asked ourselves what is best for our traditional public schools, our communities and our kids?

Perhaps the fundamental question is what does society stand to lose in the name of “school choice?” Whose choice is it, anyway?”

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding, Indiana, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Texas Tribune: Vouchers Are Not About Kids, They are About Money

By dianeravitch
February 3, 2017 //
18

Ross Ramsey of the Texas Tribune reviews the upcoming voucher battle in Texas.

The voucher fight is not about kids. It is not about education. It is about who gets the public money. “While it seems to be a fight about education, it’s really a fight about money — about whether taxpayers should foot some or all of the tuition bill for private elementary and secondary education.”

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick wants vouchers. Governor Gregg Abbott wants vouchers.

Their big battle will take place in the House, where every year a coalition of urban Democrats and rural Republicans defend their public schools and oppose funding private and religious schools.

Will the coalition stand strong again this year?

Is there any evidence that vouchers will help the children of Texas? No.

.

Categories Funding, Texas, Vouchers

Laura Chapman on the Mysterious Non-Evaluation of ED Department Charter Funding

By dianeravitch
January 22, 2017 //
12

Laura Chapman, retired educator and crack researcher, comments on the strange case of the millions (billions?) of dollars awarded to charter schools that have never been evaluated as to their use, misuse, or effectiveness:

 

 

I doubt if you will ever find an evaluation report for our charter school investments, from USDE or IES.
USDE shoved money out the door for anything charter–startup, replication (franchising), and facilities and facilities financing.

 
Negative reviews of the grant applications were ignored. I read some of these reviews. Even the questions for the reviewers were rigged to minimize “accountability.”

 
We paid federal dollars for absurdities, including advertising for charter students; cross-country junkets to recruit teachers and leaders; uniforms for the students including backpacks with logos, various goodies for “awards.”

 
I have yet to find any reports from states back to USDE on what happened to the money channeled to states. No federal reports on schools opened, closed, etc. No credible peer-reviewed independent studies on student outcomes.

 
USDE let the charter authorizers and franchisers call the shots. Some of the grant applications had redacted information–unreadable chunks of text blacked out because this information was “proprietary” and might “leak,” offering a competitive advantage to other charters. USDE rolled over on that request from the grant applicants. What was redacted? Test scores and enrollments were redacted.

 
I just checked the 2016 active contracts of USDE bearing on charters. Only two are there, and both have been granted extensions from the original contracts.

 
WESTAT, INC. The purpose of this procurement is to obtain technical services for the U.S. Department of Education Charter Schools Program to support the Credit Enhancement Program with grantee monitoring. Monitoring grant projects means examining policies, systems, and procedures to ensure compliance with Federal statutes, regulations, Guidance, grant applications, and performance agreements.

Dates: 9/25/15 to 9/24/17 extended to 9/24/19
Amount: $514,554. This is a very small contract for WESTAT: It is a major subcontractor for many federal agencies.

 
SAFAL PARTNERS, INC. The purpose of this contract is to obtain technical assistance for the U.S. Department of Education Charter Schools Program for a range of activities, including online assistance, meetings, reports, studies, and assistance in a variety of focus areas, that COULD include human capital resources, facilities, authorizing, accountability, students with disabilities, English learners, military-connected children, and others.
Dates: from 9/27/13 to 9/26/17 extended to 9/26/18-
Amount: $12,872,533.
SAFAL Partners leads the National Charter School Resource Center, which hosts other USDE subcontractors. SAFAL Partners appears to be the go-to outfit for charter-friendly research. Clients include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Laura and John Arnold Foundation, Education Pioneers, George W. Bush Institute, Teach for America Houston among others.

 
A 2016 report from SAFAL Partners titled “Student Achievement in Charter Schools: What the Research Shows” is a very limited and dubious “comparison” of five studies, with caveats dismissed (e.g., fewer ELL and special education students in charter schools, only math and reading scores, test scores not from the same tests, and more). This report is more PR more than credible research.

Categories Charter Schools, Funding, Research, U.S. Department of Education

Steven Singer: Donald Trump Lies: Our Schools Are Not “Flush with Cash”

By dianeravitch
January 21, 2017 //
14

Steven Singer says it straight: “Donald Trump lies.”

 

In a throwaway line in his inaugural speech, Trump said that the nation’s schools are “flush with cash” but failing to teach anything to their students.

 

To put it bluntly, Donald Trump knows nothing about American education. And he has chosen a Secretary of Education who knows even less than he does.

 

Steven describes the severe lack of funds that afflict many school districts, especially those in urban areas. School budgets have not grown since the 2008 economic collapse, yet they are expected to subtract funds to pay for charters, vouchers, and cybercharters (most of which perform worse than public schools).

 

I recommend that Trump and DeVos read my book “Reign of Error,” which shows that test scores are the highest they have been since the early 1970s, when NAEP testing began; that graduation rates are the highest they have ever been in our history; and that dropout rates are the lowest ever, for every racial group. But I have no hope that they will. Trump doesn’t read books, and DeVos is an ideologue whose mind cannot be changed by facts or evidence.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Privatization

Arizona: Poll Shows Public Would Pay More for Better Education

By dianeravitch
January 19, 2017 //
7

A group called “Expect More Arizona” conducted a poll and found that the public is willing to pay higher taxes for better schools. Arizona is currently overrun with charter schools, most of dubious quality. Choice has left most children behind.

 

A survey conducted in mid-December on behalf of Expect More Arizona affirms that education is still the most pressing issue on the minds of Arizona voters, above immigration and the economy.

 

When asked to name specific concerns related to education, lack of funding and teacher pay/teacher shortage rose to the top. In fact, when asked what issue, if any, voters would be willing to pay more in taxes to support, higher teacher pay was the top issue across all political parties.

 

The poll also showed strong support for the renewal of Prop 301, a voter initiative passed in 2000 that provides a six-tenths of one cent sales tax for public education, resulting in more than $650 million in revenue each year. Additionally, voters surveyed support possibly increasing the associated sales tax rate in order to fund teacher pay or K-3 literacy programs.

 

Other notable results from the survey of likely Arizona voters show:

 

Finding a long-term solution for education funding is rated as a top education priority by 84 percent of likely Arizona voters, regardless of their age, party affiliation, ethnicity, economic status, or geographic location.
Ninety-five (95) percent of voters believe it is important to provide schools the funding they need to attract and retain great teachers with 76 percent agreeing Arizona is facing a teacher shortage crisis.
An overwhelming majority agree that Arizona must ensure all students receive the support needed to read proficiently by the end of 3rd grade (95%).
Voters agree all students deserve a great education (96%) and that education impacts the strength of our communities (95%).
Eighty percent agree that increasing the number of people who graduate from the state’s public community colleges and universities will help improve the state’s economy and 75 percent of voters also agree that community colleges and universities should receive additional funding.

Categories Arizona, Funding
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