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Julia Sass Rubin: Governor Christie’s Dishonest and Unfair Funding Plan

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2016 //
14

Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey unveiled a new funding plan, which he claims is “fair.” The essence of his plan that all children in the state would get exactly the same dollar amount–$6,599–, and that is fair! So, whether you are a child in a wealthy district or a child in an impoverished district, you will get the same! Isn’t that fair? Well, not really. That’s like saying the rich and the poor are equally permitted to sleep under bridges.

Julia Sass Rubin of Rutgers University explains why Chris Christie’s plan is a hoax and a swindle. It is not just because giving exactly the same amount to children in rich and poor districts is divisive and harms those with the greatest needs, but because so much of the budget is already earmarked that there is not enough to divvy up fairly.

Although numerous commentators pointed out the devastating impact that Christie’s proposal would have on children who live in communities with high rates of poverty, none actually verified the governor’s claim that dividing state aid equally among all New Jersey students would result in $6,599 per pupil funding.

Had they done so, they would have found that the $6,599 per pupil figure, and the promises of property tax reductions predicated on it, are both false.

There simply is not a $9.1 billion state education budget available to distribute across New Jersey while also protecting special education funding and charter schools.

State special education funding alone accounts for almost a billion dollars. And state funding pays for less than a third of all special education expenses. So if the governor distributed state aid evenly, he would eliminate the ability of many districts to provide special education services as their local tax base is inadequate to fund the additional costs.

Then there’s the state funding Christie would need to set aside to protect charter schools. In 2015-16, charter schools received in excess of $600 million in funding, primarily in the form of state aid pass-throughs from high poverty districts. And charter school funding is growing rapidly as the Christie administration increases the number of charter school students.

The governor’s numbers also ignore other programs he is unlikely to cut, such as pre-school funding and choice aid.

Eliminating state pre-school funding would remove another $656 million from the funds Christie could distribute to all districts. Cutting the funding would not only be bad public policy, it also would jeopardize federal preschool funds New Jersey currently receives.

The $54 million in choice aid funds the popular Interdistrict Public School Choice program that the governor supports and that benefits many small, rural districts.

There are many other examples.

When all is factored in, the actual amount that the governor’s plan would distribute is approximately $4,800 per student, nearly $2,000 less than he promised in his speech….

For example, Union City, which Christie lauded for producing “extraordinary growth under very trying circumstances,” would see its state and local funding drop from approximately $16,400 to $6,100 per student, a funding level below that of Mississippi.

Categories Equity, Funding, New Jersey

A Cruel Hoax: Mississippi Honored for “Innovation”

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2016 //
16

The Education Commission for the States, a once reputable organization, recently decided to honor Mississippi with the 2016 Frank Newman Award for State Innovation.

Among other things, Mississippi was honored for expanding charter schools, prioritizing early literacy, and adopting an A-F grading system for schools (invented by Jeb Bush), which closely tracks the family incomes of students. Maybe Jeb Bush and Arne Duncan should have gotten the Frank Newman Award for Innovation. Mississippi was just going with the flow.

Unmentioned in the award was that the Governor and State Legislature of Mississippi fought successfully just a few months ago to block an increase in state funding for the public schools of Mississippi.

Also unmentioned is that Mississippi has adopted the strategy of not promoting third graders unless they pass a standardized test, which has no evidence of success. About 15% of students do not pass, although some will qualify for a “good cause exemption.” The law was amended this year to raise the bar and flunk more children.

The ECS statement says that Mississippi saw “historic gains” on NAEP at both 4th and 8th grades. But this is not true. The state registered no gains in eighth grade, in either mathematics or reading. There were gains in fourth grade, but Mississippi is nonetheless one of the lowest performing states in the nation.

What kind of standards does ECS have for making this award? Is the award meant to recognize states that refuse to fund their schools adequately and that enact legislation to privatize the public schools and to penalize students?

Categories Charter Schools, Funding, Mississippi

Peter Greene: There is No Meaningful Difference Between a For-Profit Charter and a Non-Profit Charter

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2016 //
77

Throughout this presidential campaign, we have been treated (or subjected) to statements by both Democratic candidates Clinton and Sanders about charters: They don’t like “private charters” (Sanders) or “for-profit charters” (Clinton).

There are no “private charters.” All charters receive public funding. That’s what makes them so attractive to investors. That secure stream of government funding.

At the very least, we can be glad that Clinton is opposed to the for-profits, which rip off taxpayers and divert public funding to their stockholders and owners. Let’s hope that means she is prepared to cut off federal funding that goes to the scam artists of the charter world. No more 3-card Monte with public dollars.

But is there a difference between “for-profit charters” and “non-profit charters”?

Peter Greene says it is a distinction without a difference.

He writes:


In this scenario, I set up my non-profit school– and then I hire a profitable management company to run the school for me. The examples of this dodge are nearly endless, but let’s consider a classic. There’s the White hat management company that was being dragged into court way back in 2011. This particular type of arrangement was known as a “sweeps contract,’ in which the school turns over close to all of its public tax dollars and the company operates the school with that money– and keeps whatever they don’t spend. The White Hat story is particularly impressive, because the court decided that White Hat got to keep all of the materials and resources that it bought with the public tax dollars.

Or consider North Carolina businessman Baker Mitchell, who set up some non-profit charter schools and promptly had them buy and lease everything– from desks to computers to teacher training to the buildings and the land– from companies belonging to Baker Mitchell. From Marian Wang’s 2014 profile:

To Mitchell, his schools are simply an example of the triumph of the free market. “People here think it’s unholy if you make a profit” from schools, he said in July, while attending a country-club luncheon to celebrate the legacy of free-market sage Milton Friedman.

Real estate grabs

All charter schools– even the non-profits– can get into the real estate business as a tasty sideline for providing a school-like product. Charter producers can find money to fund a building and then– voila– they own a tasty piece of real estate. Remember– thanks to some Clinton-era tax breaks, an investor in a charter school can double the original investment in just seven years!

In fact, there are real estate companies in the charter school business. And this can be a particularly terrible deal for the taxpayers. Bruce Baker lays out here how the public can pay for the same building twice– and end up not owning it. Read the whole thing– it’s absolutely astonishing.

Write a big fat check

If you have the giant cojones for it, you can just write yourself a big fat check with all those public taxpayer dollars. To use one of everyone’s favorite data points– Carmen farina is paid $200,000 to oversee 135,000 employees and 1.1 million students. Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy chain handles 9,000 students, for which Moskowitz is paid almost half a million dollars. And while Moskowitz gets plenty of attention, she is by no means unique….

And that’s just the profit issue

This is before we talk about every anti-democratic, school-destroying, segregation-spreading, education-failing, community-disrupting, and achievement-gap-increasing aspect of charter schools. As readers of this blog know, while charters can (and once were) a good thing, the modern charter movement has turned them into one of the most destructive forces in education today.

But we’re going to maintain focus

We’re going to stick to one point, and the point is this– to pretend that there is a substantive difference between profit and non-profit charter schools is either willfully ignorant or deliberately misleading. I’ve said it many times– a modern non-profit charter school is just a for-profit school with a good money-laundering plan.

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

New Jersey: How “Fair” is Christie’s Fairness Formula?

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2016 //
22

This brief provides a first look at the “Fairness Formula,” Chris Christie’s school tax reform plan. In this analysis, we show:

The “Fairness Formula” will greatly reward the most-affluent districts, which are already paying the lowest school tax rates as measured by percentage of income.
The “Fairness Formula” will force the least-affluent districts to slash their school budgets, severely increase local property taxes, or both.
The premise of the “Fairness Formula” – that the schools enrolling New Jersey’s at-risk students have “failed” during the period of substantial school reform – is contradicted by a large body of evidence.

Categories Education Reform, Funding, New Jersey

Kansas: Legislature Enacts Funding Plan Under Pressure from Court

By dianeravitch
July 2, 2016 //
2

Under court order, the Kansas Legislature enacted a funding bill for the schools. The state’s highest court threaten to shut down the schools entirely if the legislature didn’t take action. Despite grumbling about the “activist” court and threats to pass legislation to rein it in, the legislature did the right thing and actually allocated money to the public schools. Parents might wake up if the schools closed, and they would know who was to blame: not the court, but the legislators.

Governor Sam Brownback has consistently underfunded the public schools.

Kansas needs parents and educators to run for the legislature to make sure it meets one of the most fundamental responsibilities of the state: the education of its children.

Categories Education Reform, Funding, Kansas

LEAKED: The Draft of the Democrat Party Platform

By dianeravitch
July 2, 2016 //
116

Several members of the Democratic party’s platform committee sent me the draft of the platform. It is linked below so we can all reflect on what is being considered. This is a draft so it can be changed. Please read it and send your best ideas.

The section on education contains a lot of reformer lingo. Zip codes. Options. Accountability. The Democratic party favors “high academic standards.” Who favors “low academic standards?” The party opposes too much testing; who favors too much testing?

The rhetoric about “high academic standards” brings echoes of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. Wouldn’t it have been refreshing to see a statement about meeting the needs of all children? Or ensuring that all schools have the staff and resources they need for the children they enroll?

And then there’s the section on charters. The party is against for-profit charters: so far, so good, but how about saying that a Clinton administration will stop federal funding of for-profit schools and colleges, because they are low-quality and predatory, with profit as their top priority?

The party favors “high quality charters.” Does that mean corporate charter chains like KIPP, Achievement First, and Success Academy? Probably. How about a statement opposing corporate replacements for neighborhood public schools? How about a statement insisting that charters accept English language learners and students with disabilities at the same rate as the neighborhood public school? How about a statement opposing draconian disciplinary policies and suspensions?

How about a clear statement that the Clinton administration will no longer permit school closings as academic punishment? How about a clear signal that the Clinton administration intends to protect and strengthen our nation’s essential traditional public schools, which serve all children. How about signaling a new direction for federal education policy, one that promises to support schools and educators, not to punish them.

Please read and share yours reactions. I will pass ideas along to platform committee members.

See the entire pdf here.

Categories Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Democrats, Education Industry, Education Reform, Equity, For-Profit, Funding, Support for public schools, U.S. Department of Education

Oklahoma: Teachers Fight Back! 40 Run for Office!

By dianeravitch
July 1, 2016 //
8

NPR reported on a new, smart wave of activism in Oklahoma: 40 teachers are running for office this year. They are running because they want to increase funding for the public schools. Most are Democrats, but some are Republicans and Independents. One of the candidates is Oklahoma’s Teacher of the Year for 2016.

This is great news! The best way to change the legislature is to run for a seat at the table.

Getting elected to the State Senate or Assembly (or whatever it is called in your state) is far more powerful than posting a petition on change.org or holding a rally to get the attention of the legislators.

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, and change the face of the legislature.

Go, Oklahoma teachers!

Categories Funding, Oklahoma, Teachers

BOMBSHELL: Dark Money and the Fight to Defund Public Schools in California!

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2016 //
20

In 2012, Californians voted on Proposition 30, which raised taxes on the richest citizens in order to raise funding for public schools and charter schools. The measure passed, despite a well-funded effort to defeat it.

A group of unions and progressive activists released a list of nearly 80 wealthy Californians who secretly funded the campaign to defeat Proposition 30. One of them was billionaire Eli Broad, who publicly supported Prop 30 but donated either $500,000 or $1 million to the effort to defeat it.

The progressive activists–called California Hedge Clippers–dug into records to show where the money came from to fight the temporary tax to aid schools.

Individuals named in the group’s report include Silicon Valley tech and investment executive John H. Scully ($500,000), investor and Hyatt Hotel heir Anthony Pritzker ($100,000), developer Geoff Palmer ($100,000) and private equity investor Gerald Parsky ($50,000).

Donors, regulators concluded, contributed money to an out-of-state organization, which circulated funds through a series of other groups and eventually back to California. By then, the identity of the donors was beyond the reach of disclosure laws.

As the money was channeled to California, some transfers were not properly disclosed and therefore violated the law, officials said. Well after the election, a California investigation resulted in $16 million in fines to some of the groups as well as the disclosure of some donors, including Broad, who either gave $500,000 or $1 million, depending on how the source documents are interpreted. The donors were not fined….

Among the names to emerge in the California research is Nils Colin Lind ($50,000), who was at the time an executive at Blum Capital, the firm he co-founded with Richard Blum, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s husband. The larger contributions include $800,000 from machine-tool manufacturer Gene Haas. The researchers also uncovered additional money from the Fisher family, heirs to the Gap fortune and among the most generous supporters of charter schools; their revised total is $10 million.

The list also includes leaders of the charter school movement, such as Scully and Tony Ressler ($25,000), a former longtime board member of the charter group Alliance College-Ready Public Schools.

Like other public schools, charters reaped huge financial benefits from Proposition 30 after it passed in 2012. School officials across the state hope voters in the November election will extend the tax on the wealthiest 2% of earners….

The donors’ money traveled a circuitous path. They contributed to Americans for Job Security, a Virginia trade association. This outfit then passed the money to the Center to Protect Patient Rights in Arizona. The center next sent $11 million to a Phoenix group, Americans for Responsible Leadership, which provided it to the Small Business Action Committee. That committee spent the money on the California campaigns.

In another relay, the Center to Protect Patient Rights provided more than $4 million to the America Future Fund in Iowa, which passed the money to the California Future Fund for Free Markets, a campaign committee supporting Proposition 32.

Not all of the donated money made it back to California. About $10 million was captured by groups in other parts of the country, the researchers said.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, California, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization

Mississippi: Yes for Charters, No for Funding

By dianeravitch
June 26, 2016 //
2

Last year, the people of Mississippi had a chance to increase the funding for their woefully inadequate public schools, and the legislature and governor did everything in their power to reject the proposal, even creating an alternative measure designed to confuse voters. Act 42, which would have compelled equitable funding was voted down. Act 42 failed to win approval. Here is the background.

The legislature’s answer to school improvement: charter schools. These are the schools of choice that segregationists have wanted since the Brown decision.

Some in the legislature want to take the next step and authorize vouchers, to thoroughly undermine public schools.

The first two charters in Jackson are finishing their first year: one is struggling, the other is part of a corporate chain and is off to a good start.

Categories Charter Schools, Equity, Funding, Mississippi, Privatization

Chris Christie Punches Poor Children in the Face

By dianeravitch
June 24, 2016 //
32

Governor Chris Christie made a budget proposal for “fair funding” that attempts to pit middle-class taxpayers against the poor.

He proposes to give the same amount of school aid to every child in the schools, whether they are in an affluent or a poor district. He is selling this as property tax relief for the middle class, who will get a boost, but will result in cuts to poor kids in poor districts.

Russ Walsh calls this “punching poor children in the face,” as Chris Christie once said he would like to do to the teachers’ unions. Walsh writes:

He proposes a flat rate of aid in the area of $6,599 for every student in New Jersey whether they live in leafy, affluent Montgomery Township or cash strapped, property tax poor Camden. This “every one gets the same money plan” would provide a windfall to wealthy districts, many of which would see a dramatic increase in state aid to schools (and a reduction in property taxes) and conversely a death sentence to urban districts who would see their budgets reduced by tens of millions of dollars.

Daniel Katz says that Christie is pulling a reverse Robin Hood, stealing from the poor to give to the rich. He says, “A good way to approach almost any education proposal from Chris Christie is to simply assume that it will cause far more harm than good and then try to gauge just how far along the harmful spectrum it will actually be.”

Mark Weber (aka Jersey Jazzman) says that Christie’s plan is so absurd that it makes building a wall on the Mexican border look reasonable by comparison.

Even Christie’s friends at Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), the hedge fund pro-charter group, cried foul.

“Fair funding” is one of those far-right ideas intended to pave the way for vouchers, a backpack full of cash, and strapping the money to the kids’ back. It is intended to generate support among middle-class and affluent people who object to high property taxes. Call it class warfare. Whatever it is, it is not fair to the kids with the greatest needs.

Categories Funding, New Jersey
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