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Denis Smith: Ohio’s Voodoo Economics Benefits Charter Schools, Hurts Public Schools

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2016 //
20

Denis Smith, who previously worked in the Ohio Education Department’s charter school division, writes here about the Byzantine school finance system of the state, which enables charters to be funded at the expense of public schools.

 

He writes:

 

Last fall, the Columbus Dispatch published an article, Are local school taxes subsidizing Ohio Charters? that confirmed the Byzantine nature of Ohio school finance and the complexities surrounding the calculation of state school aid. If comprehending how the formulas work which allow districts to receive state aid is enough of a challenge, readers also learned that the state was adding insult to financial injury by sending extra money to charters by calculating the amount of local support in the charter aid formula. This calculation method further assists charters by using the local share amount (viz., local property taxes raised by the district for its schools) in the formula to determine charter payments at the expense of public education.

 

How novel: starve public schools of state funds for years but use local support dollars to calculate the level of state charter payments. So much for local control.

 

Let’s get back to that word Byzantine again. Consider this one example of how state school aid works.

 

“When a student living in the Columbus district attends a charter school, the state subtracts nearly $7,800 on average from the district’s state funding. But the state is giving Columbus only an average of about $3,900 in basic aid per pupil,” the Dispatch’s Jim Siegel reported. “Once charter-school money is subtracted, the district gets just $2,604 for each student who is left, a $1,312 loss that is also, by far, the highest in the state,” he explained.

 

As we’ve read before on these pages, voodoo public policy begets voodoo economics which begets voodoo accounting. In the Dispatch story, Sen. Peggy Lehner, the chair of the Senate Education Committee, confirmed the perfidious nature of state school aid when it comes to charters. “It’s kind of a shell game with the money,” she said. “It’s state dollars, but you have to use local dollars to backfill the state dollars. I think it’s pretty clear that these kids are getting local dollars.”

 

School boards and voters are starting to catch on to the shell game that causes the dollars to flow out of their public schools and into the coffers of privately managed charter schools.

 

The situation is bringing financial distress to many districts, which explains why dozens of districts have invoiced the state for the money they have lost to charters.

 

Scam. Voodoo public policy. Shell game.

 

How long will the voters of Ohio stand for this financial undermining of the public schools that educate more than 90% of the state’s children?

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Funding, Ohio

Texas Court Rejects Appeal to Fix State Funding Formula

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2016 //
10

Nearly two-thirds of the school districts in Texas filed a lawsuit against the state formula for funding public schools. A lower court judge ruled that the state’s funding formula was unconstitutional. Hopes were high that the lower court ruling would sustain that decision.

Unfortunately the state Supreme Court sustained the current methodology.

The legislature cut $5.4 Billion out of the schools’ budget in 2011. Many districts have never recovered from those draconian cuts.

“Houston lawyer Mark Trachtenberg, who represented 88 property-wealthy school districts in the case, said the ruling “represents a dark day for Texas school children, especially given the Legislature’s repeated failure to adequately fund our schools.”

“A recent study by the National Education Association found that Texas ranks 38th in the country in per-pupil public-education spending.”

Pastors for Texas Children issued the following statement:

“Pastors for Texas Children Executive Director Rev. Charles Foster Johnson on Today’s Supreme Court Decision

“The Texas Supreme Court’s ruled today that the Texas public school funding system technically meets “minimum constitutional requirements”—a ruling belied by the direct professional experience and expert witness of hundreds of thousands of Texas educators.

“The Court’s conclusion may be based on legal technicality, but the burden of this sophistry will be borne by our 5.3 million schoolchildren.

“We hover near the bottom nationally in monetary support for our schools. It is sinful for a society as rich as Texas—an economic “miracle,” as a recent governor put it—to make our schoolchildren eat the crumbs that fall from our state’s table of bounty.
Our Lord famously said, “To those whom much is given, much is required.” But, the Texas Supreme Court and the Texas State Legislature have perversely revised that moral dictum: “To those whom much is given, less is required.”

“Of particular moral offense is the arrogance shown by certain state leaders whose cynical tactics seek to divert our attention away from the grave injustice of inadequate school finance.

“Pastors for Texas Children will not fall for these ridiculous distractions.
80,000 new schoolchildren enter our public school system every year, in classes that are overfilled, with teachers that are underpaid, in schools that are underfunded. Over 60% of our Texas schoolchildren are poor. Our dedicated teachers work long hours at low pay to provide God’s gift of education for them while enduring demoralizing attacks from the very leaders constitutionally charged and Biblically sworn to support them. This is the moral outrage of our day.

“We recommit ourselves to holding our Governor, Lieutenant Governor, 31 State Senators and 150 State Representatives accountable for the “suitable provision of free public schools,” as our own Texas State Constitution mandates, as the American civil tradition establishes, and, most importantly, as the Biblical call to justice unambiguously announces.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding, Texas

Pennsylvania: Most Inequitable Funding in the Nation

By dianeravitch
May 11, 2016 //
10

After nine months of feuding over the state budget, the Pennsylvania legislature–dominated by Republicans–and Democratic Governor Tom Wolf finally reached a deal. Wolf wanted a $400 million increase for education, mostly targeted to help the beleaguered cities of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The final deal included only half that amount. Pennsylvania will remain the state with the most inequitable funding for the foreseeable future.

 

Pennsylvania has a long way to go to make up for the heavy cuts that former Governor Tom Corbett imposed on the schools.

 

To keep up with the news from Pennsylvania, read the Keystone State Education Coalition’s daily briefings.

Categories Education Reform, Funding, Pennsylvania

Michigan Drops Common Core, May Adopt Discarded Massachusetts Standards

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2016 //
17

This is ironic. Michigan wants to drop the Common Core standards and substitute the Massachusetts standards that were dropped by Massachusetts to make way for the Common Core standards!

 

A bill is moving through the Michigan legislature to do exactly that. Michigan has had a groundswell of opposition to the Common Core standards, like most other states. Their solution is to take the standards of the nation’s highest performing state, Massachusetts, and make them specific to Michigan.

 

Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, those standards were jettisoned because the state won a Race to the Top Grant and agreed to adopt the Commin Core.  As it happens, the Massachusetts state Commissioner of Education is Mitchell Chester, who was until recently, the chair of the PARCC testing consortium. So naturally he wanted his state to drop the MCAS and use PARCC.

 

When PARCC started, underwritten by the US Department of Education, 24 states and DC joined its consortium. Now it is down to 6 states and DC. Massachusetts is using a hybrid: part PARCC and part MCAS.

 

What a fine mess!

 

When will states figure out that an effective reform strategy is far more complicated than standards, testing, and accountability. When Massachusetts adopted its standards, it invested new resources and  increased equitable spending. It expanded pre-k and raised standards for new teachers.

 

There is still much to be done in Massachusetts. But it is important to remember that it achieved good results by sensible improvements in schools, not by closing schools, firing teachers and principals or mass privatization (until recently, Massachusetts had only 25 charter schools in the state).

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Education Reform, Equity, Funding, Massachusetts, Michigan, Testing

Stuart Egan: How the North Carolina Legislature and Governor Are Destroying Public Schools and the Teaching Profession

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2016 //
10

Stuart Egan is a National Board Certified teacher of high school English in North Carolina. I have published his posts before. I met Stuart at the Network for Public Education annual conference in Raleigh a few weeks ago and invited him to write a post that would sum up the damage that the Tea Party government has done to teachers and schools in the past five years. He agreed to do so. His perspective is especially valuable because he is in the classroom.

 

 

Stuart Egan writes:

 

 

When the GOP won control of both houses in the North Carolina General Assembly in the elections of 2010, it was the first time that the Republicans had that sort of power since 1896. Add to that the election of Pat McCrory as governor in 2012, and the GOP has been able to run through multiple pieces of legislation that have literally changed a once progressive state into one of regression. From the Voter ID law to HB2 to fast tracking fracking to neglecting coal ash pools, the powers that-now-be have furthered an agenda that has simply been exclusionary, discriminatory, and narrow-minded.

 

And nowhere is that more evident than the treatment of public education.

 

Make no mistake. The GOP-led General Assembly has been using a deliberate playbook that other states have seen implemented in various ways. Look at Ohio and New Orleans and their for-profit charter school implementation. Look at New York State and the Opt-Out Movement against standardized testing. Look at Florida and its Jeb Bush school grading system. In fact, look anywhere in the country and you will see a variety of “reform” movements that are not really meant to “reform” public schools, but rather re-form public schools in an image of a profit making enterprise that excludes the very students, teachers, and communities that rely on the public schools to help as the Rev. William Barber would say “create the public.”

 

North Carolina’s situation may be no different than what other states are experiencing, but how our politicians have proceeded in their attempt to dismantle public education is worth exploring.

 

Specifically, the last five year period in North Carolina has been a calculated attempt at undermining public schools with over twenty different actions that have been deliberately crafted and executed along three different fronts: actions against teachers, actions against public schools, and actions to deceive the public.

 

 

Actions Against Teachers

  1. Teacher Pay – A recent WRAL report and documentary highlighted that in NC, teacher pay has dropped 13% in the past 15 years when adjusted for inflation (http://www.wral.com/after-inflation-nc-teacher-pay-has-dropped-13-in-past-15-years/15624302/). That is astounding when one considers that we are supposedly rebounding from the Great Recession. Yes, this 15 year period started with democrats in place, but it has been exacerbated by GOP control. Salary schedules were frozen and then revamped to isolate raises to increments of five+ years. As surrounding states have continued to increase pay for teachers, NC has stagnated into the bottom tier in regards to teacher pay.
  2. Removal of due-process rights – One of the first items that the GOP controlled General Assembly attempted to pass was the removal of due-process right for all teachers. Thanks to NCAE, the courts decided that it would be a breach of contract for veteran teachers who had already obtained career-status. But that did not cover newer teachers who will not have the chance to gain career status and receive due process rights.

 

What gets lost in the conversation with the public is that due-process rights are a protective measure for students and schools. Teachers need to know that they can speak up against harsh conditions or bad policies without repercussions. Teachers who are not protected by due-process will not be as willing to speak out because of fear.

 

  1. Graduate Degree Pay Bumps Removed – Because advanced degree pay is abolished, many potential teachers will never enter the field because that is the only way to receive a sizable salary increase to help raise a family or afford to stay in the profession. It also cripples graduate programs in the state university system because obtaining a graduate degree for new teachers would place not only more debt on teachers, but there is no monetary reward to actually getting it.
  2. The Top 25% to receive bonus – One measure that was eventually taken off the table was that each district was to choose 25% of its teachers to be eligible to receive a bonus if they were willing to give up their career status which is commonly known as tenure. Simply put, it was hush money to keep veteran teachers from speaking out when schools and students needed it. To remove “tenure” is to remove the ability for a teacher to fight wrongful termination. In a Right-To-Work state, due process rights are the only protection against wrongful termination when teachers advocate for schools, like the teacher who is writing this very piece.
  3. Standard 6 – In North Carolina, we have a teacher evaluation system that has an unproven record of accurately measuring a teacher’s effectiveness. The amorphous Standard 6 for many teachers includes a VAM called Assessment of Student Work.

 

I personally teach multiple sections of AP English Language and Composition and am subject to the Assessment of Student Work (ASW). I go through a process in which I submit student samples that must prove whether those students are showing ample growth.

 

In June of 2015, I uploaded my documents in the state’s system and had to wait until November to get results. The less than specific comments from the unknown assessor(s) were contradictory at best. They included:

 

Alignment

Al 1 The evidence does not align to the chosen objective.

Al 4 All of the Timelapse Artifacts in this Evidence Collection align to the chosen objectives.

 

Growth

Gr 1 Student growth is apparent in all Timelapse Artifacts.

Gr 2 Student growth is apparent between two points in time.

Gr 3 Student growth is not apparent between two points in time.

Gr 4 Student growth samples show achievement but not growth.

Gr 9 Evidence is clear/easily accessible

Gr 10 Evidence is not clear/not easily accessible

 

Narrative Context

NC 1 Narrative Context addresses all of the key questions and supports understanding of the evidence.

NC 4 Narrative Context does not address one or more of the key questions.

 

 

And these comments did not correspond to any specific part of my submission. In fact, I am more confused about the process than ever before. It took over five months for someone who may not have one-fifth of my experience in the classroom to communicate this to me. If this is supposed to supply me with the tools to help guide my future teaching, then I would have to say that this would be highly insufficient, maybe even “unbest.”

 

  1. Push for Merit Pay – The bottom line is that merit pay destroys collaboration and promotes competition. That is antithetical to the premise of public education. Not only does it force teachers to work against each other, it fosters an atmosphere of exclusivity and disrespect. What could be more detrimental to our students?

 

Those legislators who push for merit pay do not see effective public schools as collaborative communities, but as buildings full of contractors who are determined to outperform others for the sake of money. And when teachers are forced to focus on the results of test scores, teaching ceases from being a dynamic relationship between student and teacher, but becomes a transaction driven by a carrot on an extended stick.

 

  1. “Average” Raises – In the long session of 2014, the NC General Assembly raised salaries for teachers in certain experience brackets that allowed them to say that an “average” salary for teachers was increased by over 7%. They called it a “historic raise.” However, if you divided the amount of money used in these “historic” raises by the number of teachers who “received” them, it would probably amount to about $270 per teacher.

 

That historic raise was funded in part by eliminating teachers’ longevity pay. Similar to an annual bonus, this is something that all state employees in North Carolina — except, now, for teachers — gain as a reward for continued service. The budget rolled that money into teachers’ salaries and labeled it as a raise. That’s like me stealing money out of your wallet and then presenting it to you as a gift.

 

  1. Health Insurance and Benefits – Simply put, health benefits are requiring more out-of-pocket expenditures, higher deductibles, and fewer benefits. There is also talk of pushing legislation that will take away retirement health benefits for those who enter the profession now.
  1. Attacks on Teacher Advocacy Groups (NCAE) – Seen as a union and therefore must be destroyed, the North Carolina Association of Educators has been incredibly instrumental in bringing unconstitutional legislation to light and carrying out legal battles to help public schools. In the last few years, the automatic deduction of paychecks to pay dues to NCAE was disallowed by the General Assembly, creating a logistical hurdle for people and the NCAE to properly transfer funds for membership
  2. Revolving Door of Standardized Tests – Like other states, we have too many. In my years as a North Carolina teacher (1997-1999, 2005-2015), I have endured the Standard Course of Study, the NC ABC’s, AYP’s, and Common Core. Each initiative has been replaced by a supposedly better curricular path that allegedly makes all previous curriculum standards inferior and obsolete. And with each of these initiatives comes new tests that are graded differently than previous ones and are “converted” into data points to rank student achievement and teacher effectiveness. Such a revolving door makes the ability to measure data historically absolutely ridiculous.

 

Actions Against Schools

 

 

  1. Less Money Spent per Pupil – The argument that Gov. McCrory and the GOP-led General Assembly have made repeatedly is that they are spending more on public education now than ever before. And they are correct. We do spend more total money now than before the recession hit. But that is a simplified and spun claim because North Carolina has had a tremendous population increase and the need to educate more students.

Let me use an analogy. Say in 2008, a school district had 1000 students in its school system and spent 10 million dollars in its budget to educate them. That’s a 10,000 per pupil expenditure. Now in 2015, that same district has 1500 students and the school system is spending 11.5 million to educate them. According to Raleigh’s claims, that district is spending more total dollars now than in 2008 on education, but the per-pupil expenditure has gone down significantly to over 2300 dollars per student or 23percent.

  1. Remove Caps on Class Sizes – There is a suggested formula in allotting teachers to schools based on the number of students per class, but that cap was removed. House Bill 112 allowed the state to remove class size requirements while still allowing monies from the state to be allocated based on the suggested formula.

Some districts have taken to move away from the 6/7 period day to block scheduling. Take my own district for example, the Winston-Salem / Forsyth County Schools. When I started ten years ago, I taught five classes with a cap of 30 students. With the block system in place, I now teach six classes in a school year with no cap. The math is simple: more students per teacher.

  1. Amorphous Terms – North Carolina uses a lot of amorphous terms like “student test scores”, “student achievement”, and “graduation rates,” all of which are among the most nebulous terms in public education today.

 

 

When speaking of “test scores”, we need to agree about which test scores we are referring to and if they have relevance to the actual curriculum. Since the early 2000’s we have endured No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top initiatives that have flooded our public schools with mandatory testing that never really precisely showed how “students achieved.” It almost boggles the mind to see how much instructional time is lost just administering local tests to see how students may perform on state tests that may be declared invalid with new education initiatives. Even as I write, most states are debating on how they may or may not leave behind the Common Core Standards and replace them with their own. Know what that means? Yep. More tests.

 

 

“Graduation rate” might be one of the most constantly redefined terms in public schools. Does it mean how many students graduate in four years? Five years? At least finish a GED program or a diploma in a community college? Actually, it depends on whom you ask and when you ask. But with the NC State Board of Education’s decision to go to a ten-point grading scale in all high schools instead of the seven-point scale used in many districts, the odds of students passing courses dramatically increased because the bar to pass was set lower.

 

 

  1. Jeb Bush School Grading System – This letter grading system used by the state literally shows how poverty in our state affects student achievement. What the state proved with this grading system is that it is ignoring the very students who need the most help — not just in the classroom, but with basic needs such as early childhood programs and health-care accessibility. These performance grades also show that schools with smaller class sizes and more individualized instruction are more successful, a fact that lawmakers willfully ignore when it comes to funding our schools to avoid overcrowding.
  2. Cutting Teacher Assistants – Sen. Tom Apodaca said when this legislation was introduced, “We always believe that having a classroom teacher in a classroom is the most important thing we can do. Reducing class sizes, we feel, will give us better results for the students.” The irony in this statement is glaring. Fewer teacher assistants for early grades especially limit what can be accomplished when teachers are facing more cuts in resources and more students in each classroom.

 

Actions To Deceive The Public

 

 

  1. Opportunity Grants – Opportunity Grant legislation is like the trophy in the case for the GOP establishment in Raleigh. It is a symbol of “their” commitment to school choice for low-income families. But that claim is nothing but a red-herring.

Simply put, it is a voucher system that actually leaves low-income families without many choices because most private schools which have good track records have too-high tuition rates and do not bus students. Furthermore, the number of private schools receiving monies from the Opportunity Grants who identify themselves as religiously affiliated is well over 80 percent according to the NC State Educational Assistance Authority. Those religious schools are not tested the way public schools are and do not have the oversight that public schools have. Furthermore, it allows tax dollars to go to entities that already receive monetary benefits because they are tax free churches.

 

 

  1. Charter Schools – Charter school growth in North Carolina has been aided by the fact that many of the legislators who have created a favorable environment for charter benefit somehow, someway from them. Many charters abuse the lack of oversight and financial cloudiness and simply do not benefit students.

 

Especially in rural areas, uncontrolled charter school growth has been detrimental to local public schools. When small school districts lose numbers of students to charter schools, they also lose the ability to petition for adequate funds in the system that NC uses to finance schools ; the financial impact can be overwhelming. In Haywood County, Central Elementary School was closed because of enrollment loss to a charter school that is now on a list to be recommended for closing.

 

 

  1. Virtual Schools – There are two virtual academies in NC. Both are run by for-profit entities based out of state. While this approach may work for some students who need such avenues, the withdrawal rates of students in privately-run virtual schools in NC are staggering according to the Department of Public Instruction.

 

  1. Achievement School Districts – Teach For America Alumnus Rep. Rob Bryan has crafted a piece of legislation that has been rammed through the General Assembly which will create ASD’s in NC. Most egregious is that it was crafted secretly. Rather than having a public debate about how to best help our “failing” schools with our own proven resources, Rep. Bryan chose to surreptitiously strategize and plan a takeover of schools. ASD’s have not worked in Tennessee. They will not work in North Carolina except for those who make money from them.

 

  1. Reduction of Teacher Candidates in Colleges – At last report, teaching candidate percentages in undergraduate programs in the UNC system has fallen by over 30% in the last five years. This is just an indication of the damage done to secure a future generation of teachers here in North Carolina.

 

  1. Elimination of Teaching Fellows Program – Once regarded as a model to recruit the best and brightest to become teachers and stay in North Carolina was abolished because of “cost”.

 

 

Overall, this has been North Carolina’s playbook. And those in power in Raleigh have used it effectively. However, there are some outcomes that do bode well for public school advocates for now and the future.

 

  • Teachers are beginning to “stay and fight” rather than find other employment.
  • NCAE has been able to win many decisions in the court system.
  • North Carolina is in the middle of a huge election year and teachers as well as public school advocates will surely vote.
  • The national spotlight placed on North Carolina in response to the voter-ID laws and HB2 are only adding pressure to the powers that be to reconsider what they have done.
  • Veteran teachers who still have due-process rights are using them to advocate for schools.

 

I only hope that the game changes so that a playbook for returning our public schools back to the public will be implemented.

 

Stuart Egan, NBCT
West Forsyth High School

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Class size, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Funding, North Carolina, Privatization, Republicans, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Pay, Teacher Tenure, Teachers, Testing, Vouchers

Boston: Can Parents and Students Save the Public Schools?

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2016 //
6

Our reader Christine Langhoff writes about the current crisis in public education in Boston:

To use the common idiom, Boston is “woke”!

Parents, teachers and allies of public education protested on a frigid January night outside the mayor’s State of the City address. A few days earlier, 350 teachers, parents and students attended an informational town hall during the evening, as the issues of the hidden McKinsey report were publicly aired. There was another rally on February 17, during school vacation week.

Some 3400 students walked out of their classes on March 7 and went to City Hall and the State House to demonstrate after rallying on Boston Common. Some of them testified at the State House against the lifting of the charter cap. This was a student led and organized protest, which the mayor tried to dismiss with the classic “outside agitators” line. On March 17th, a group of parents, following the students’ lead, demonstrated outside City Hall, demanding the release of the report.

There have been a series of public hearings on the city’s budget, all of which are very well attended. A coalition of parents, educators and students are all on the same side of this argument, and though progress has been slow, we are not discouraged. Up next is walk-in day on May 7.

Much of this is organized on social media. In addition to the parents’ group QUEST, BEJA, Boston Education Justice Alliance http://bostonedjustice.org and the student groups YOUNG and BSAC http://www.youthonboard.org as well as Citizens for Public Schools are working together to keep our schools. The Boston Teachers Union has taken a page from our fellow unionists at the Chicago Teachers Union, allying with and supporting all these groups.

The question that has not been answered is why cuts to the budget, decreasing services to our SWD, and diminishment of offerings for students (closing high school libraries!) is necessary. Boston is in the midst of an unprecedented building and real estate boom; tax receipts are up by $95 million this year alone. (Massachusetts weathered the 2008 catastrophe pretty well.) We’re ranked number one (for what it’s worth) in urban school systems. What pretext is there for closing 30-50 schools? None.

But here’s the scenario we’re up against:

No elected school board, appointed by the mayor (since 1993)

The mayor founded a charter school

The superintendent is a Broadie

More parasites from TFA, TNTP, StudentsFirst are being hired at the school department

86% of our students aren’t white; most of them are poor and nearly half have English as a second language.

The governor wants more charters

The state board of ed is appointed by the governor

The state board is a cabal of privatizers from HGSE, the Pioneer Institute, New Schools Venture Fund

The former PARCC chairman is the state Commissioner

Walton is pouring money into the city

DFER sponsored successful candidates in the most recent election

Boston is a signatory to the Gates CRPE contract

The mayor and superintendent want One Enrollment

It’s an uphill battle and we can’t afford to lose.

Categories Boston, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Equity, Funding, Parents, Privatization, Students

Howard Blume: Los Angeles Charters Try to Offload Teacher Pensions on District

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2016 //
70

Howard Blume reports that charters in Los Angeles are trying to avoid the cost of paying pensions by advising teachers who near retirement age to go to work for the public school system.

 

His fascinating story begins:

 

 

“A Woodland Hills charter school recently made an unusual offer to its veteran teachers: We’ll give you $30,000 if you return to the Los Angeles Unified School District before you retire.

 

“It wasn’t the teachers that El Camino Real Charter High School wanted to get rid of. It was the cost of their retirement benefits.

 
“The school’s cost-shifting strategy is one of many flashpoints between traditional public schools and the independent charters they compete with for students and money.

 

“In this case, it’s a battle over who should pay for an employee’s health benefits after retirement — the charter school or the larger school district.

 
“Financial challenges are all-but-universal in the education world, and retiree benefits are particularly costly. L.A. Unified’s unfunded liability for employee benefits has escalated to $13.6 billion.

 

“The El Camino plan would add from $2.5 million to $4.2 million to that deficit, based on district estimates. The idea is that teachers would spend their careers in the charter school, but later transfer to LAUSD to qualify for the huge institution’s retirement benefits.

 

“Except the district has decided not to play ball.

 

“Teachers who return to the district, simply to retire, are not entitled to district retirement benefits, general counsel David Holmquist said.

 

“This would be an obligation that in my view would be the charter’s responsibility,” Holmquist said.”

 

Blume points out that this decision raises interesting questions about Eli Broad’s plan to open 260 new charter schools, which will require some rethinking when they can’t dump their pension obligations on the public schools.

 

Guess Eli’s charters will have to stick with Teach for America, whose teachers are usually long gone before qualifying for a pension.

 

 

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Funding, Los Angeles, Pensions

Boston: McKinsey Recommends Closing 40% of Public Schools to Save Money

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2016 //
29

The Boston Globe reports that Boston gave McKinsey $660,000 to audit the schools. McKinsey proposed that the city could save millions by closing 40% of its public schools.

 

 

“A controversial city-ordered audit of Boston Public Schools suggested the district could save up to $85 million a year by closing 40 percent of its schools, according to newly released documents from the study.

 

“The March 5, 2015, draft by the management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. is much more detailed than a shorter version released to the public in December. The longer draft contains elements that did not appear in the previously released version that will likely be unpopular among parents.”

 

Last fall, when rumors flew that Mayor Marty Walsh made a secret deal to close 36 public schools—after campaigning against school closings and charter schools–the mayor’s office vehemently denied it.

 

The McKinsey report was written more than a year ago. It was kept secret. The fix is in.

 

What else would you expect in a city with mayoral control that hired a Broadie as superintendent? When Briadies arrive, public schools close.

 

Categories Boston, Budget Cuts, Education Reform, Funding

NPR: Would More Money “Fix” America’s Schools?

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2016 //
37

NPR ran an excellent story about the perennial debate: Can More Money Fix America’s Schools?

 

The show interviews those who say that money doesn’t make a difference; what matters is how money is spent, not how much is spent.

 

It also interviews those who say that low-income districts are inadequately funded because of property taxes.

 

It begins like this:

 

This winter, Jameria Miller would often run to her high school Spanish class, though not to get a good seat.

 

She wanted a good blanket.

 

“The cold is definitely a distraction,” Jameria says of her classroom’s uninsulated, metal walls.

 

Her teacher provided the blankets. First come, first served. Such is life in the William Penn School District in an inner-ring suburb of Philadelphia.

 

The hardest part for Jameria, though, isn’t the cold. It’s knowing that other schools aren’t like this.

 

Before her family moved closer to the city, where they could afford more living space, she attended the more affluent Upper Moreland district, which is predominantly white and, according to state and local records, spends about $1,200 more per student than William Penn.

 

That difference adds up, Jameria says, to better buildings, smaller class sizes, take-home textbooks and less teacher turnover.

 

“It’s never going to be fair,” she says, comparing her life now to her former classmates. “They’re always going to be a step ahead of us. They’ll have more money than us, and they’ll get better jobs than us, always.”

 

Critics of school spending like to point to the high spending in some low-income districts and say that the test scores didn’t go up. But what if students had heated buildings, a school nurse, a hot lunch, a librarian, and other such things that affluent districts take for granted? What if their test scores didn’t go up, but the schools were doing a better job of meeting their immediate needs as human beings?

 

This is a balanced and thought-provoking discussion.

Categories Education Reform, Funding

Connecticut: Governor Malloy Wants to Slash Education Funding

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2016 //
14

Governor Dannel Malloy has grown a big budget deficit and has decided that schools should help to reduce the deficit. He has proposed to cut school funding across the state, except for the 30 poorest districts and to eliminate state aid entirely in 28 affluent districts.

 

His proposal has set off a firestorm of opposition.

 

“To take a district like mine … and completely eliminate the funding is entirely irresponsible,” Madison Superintendent Thomas Scarice said. The district stands to lose $1.57 million.

 

Taken together with the state’s “countless unfunded mandates” for districts, Scarice said, Malloy’s proposal is “nothing less than unspeakable.”

 

The slashing of education funding was part of a revised budget proposal from Malloy in an effort to close a $922 million deficit projected for the next fiscal year.

 

Rep. Andy Fleischmann, D-West Hartford and co-chairman of the legislature’s education committee, said Malloy’s plan for education funding is “not bold or smart” and is a proposal “that no one would ever vote for….”

 

Sen. Toni Boucher, R-Wilton, said Malloy’s proposal has been met with “complete outrage and disbelief” from the towns she represents in Fairfield County. Malloy is proposing elimination of funding for many of the towns in Fairfield and Litchfield counties, as well as in several districts along the eastern shoreline.

 

“This is really a slap in the face of our communities,” Boucher said. “They are penalizing towns that have worked hard to be fiscally responsible, while the state continues to be fiscally irresponsible.”

 

She said she’s hearing an outcry for the elimination of unfunded mandates if the education funding is pulled.

 

Many school leaders say that Malloy has not only upended their budgets, but has left their planning for next year in disarray since they don’t know how much their budgets will be cut or whether Malloy’s proposal will be rejected.

 

 

Categories Budget Cuts, Connecticut, Education Reform, Funding
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