Fred Klonsky reports on his blog that Thereis a dangerous bill in the legislature that would wipe out all school funding and pensions and appoint acommission of legislators to start from scratch.
Since this is apparently Governor Bruce Rauner’s idea, you can be sure whatever happens will hurt the state’s public schools and benefit charters.
The bill has passed the State Senate and awaits action in the House.
Get involved. Speak out.
The highest court in the state of Washington announced that it would fine the state $100,000 per day for failing to comply with a previous order to fund the public schools fully.
“The state’s highest court Thursday delivered a unanimous order sanctioning the state for failing to come up with a plan to fully fund K-12 education per the court’s 2012 McCleary decision. Lawmakers and the governor are meeting Monday to begin work on it….
“The development comes as the state Supreme Court Thursday morning delivered a unanimous order sanctioning the state for failing to come up with a plan to fully fund K-12 education per the court’s 2012 McCleary decision. The court in September held the state in contempt of its decision and threatened sanctions then.
The order requires a fine of $100,000 per day and encourages Inslee to call a special session so that lawmakers can finish their work. The justices want the penalty money to be held in a special account, “for the benefit of basic education,” according to the order. But the fines will be halted if Inslee calls lawmakers into a special session and they succeed in addressing the issues the court raises….
“In their order, justices took issue with lawmakers’ progress over reducing K-3 class-sizes, as well as the lack of a plan by the state to address teacher compensation.
The Tampa Bay Tribune reported that school officials in Hillsborough County were surprised to discover a big hole in the budget after Superintendent MaryEllen Elia was fired and became New York State Commissioner of Education.
“TAMPA — In the last four years of superintendent MaryEllen Elia’s administration, the Hillsborough County School District went on a spending jag, tearing through more than half of its $361 million reserve fund, officials revealed this week.
“Left unchecked, the pattern would have resulted in another operating deficit this year — a $75 million hit that would bring the fund down near its legal minimum threshhold.
“The situation has surprised Elia’s successor, unsettled School Board members and put bonding agencies on alert, which could lead to the district facing higher interest rates when it has to borrow money.
“Jeff Eakins, who took over as superintendent after serving as Elia’s deputy, says he was caught off guard when he realized the district used $68.5 million in non-recurring funds to meet this year’s payroll.
“We’re not in any kind of financial crisis,” Eakins told the Tampa Bay Times editorial board Tuesday. But, he said, “we need to put some measures in place right now.”
A new pay structure started with funding from the Gates Foundation may cost as much as $50 million.
“It is clear, Eakins said, that the district, which serves more than 200,000 children, is spending money to extend programs that were launched with temporary funding from foundations.
“The Gates grant is one example, as it is in its final year of funding. Expenses anticipated for 2015-16 include $11.3 million for teacher peer evaluators and $6.1 million to pay mentors. Eakins said he will take a close look at these expenditures to see if they are worth sustaining, or if they should be reduced.”
Here is another citizen-educator, Rob Taylor, a teacher of special education in Tennessee, who researched the Parthenon Group. Here he shares what he learned by speaking to the Knox County Schools Board of Education in February 2014:
“Is Knox County Schools’ vision “Excellence for ALL Children”? Or only the ones who are “more profitable than others”?
“Are OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS places where ALL students have equal access to the opportunities afforded to them by a quality, FREE public education for the purpose of furthering the public good, or are they places “where private investors can PLAY?”
“Those are shocking questions, but ones I was forced to ask myself when researching the Boston-based Parthenon Group, who as you know Knox County Schools is currently paying (with a grant from the Gates Foundation of over a million dollars combined with an additional $360,000 of local money) in order to conduct a “resource analysis” of our school systems assets.
“I have watched representatives from the Parthenon Group give multiple presentations before This Board as recently as this week, a hallmark of which has been exhaustive PowerPoint arrangements outlining various statistical analyses to support their upcoming recommendations. It is my concern that these recommendations will be little more than a justification for a predetermined outcome. Namely: the opening up of our School System’s resources to the interests of for-profit businesses and private investors.
“Members of this board have stated that teachers presenting concerns to The Board provide EVIDENCE that such concerns are valid, and I have provided each of you this evening with a hard copy of a DIFFERENT KIND of PowerPoint, created by Parthenon partner and member of Parthenon’s Education Practice, Robert Lytle, which was created a few years ago for presentation to potential investors.
“I invite you to review this at your leisure but also to notice a number of statements offered in this presentation:
“Page 2: Asks the question: “Where Can Financial Investors Play?”,
“Page 3: Promises “..big, high-profile deals” and “fertile ground for proprietary opportunities”.
“Page 4: States “deals are everywhere”, and describes the 23 Billion dollar per-year revenue streams available to investors from testing, assessment, and outsourced school management.
“And MOST DISTURBINGLY, on p. 13, the quote “All students are not equal; SOME ARE MORE PROFITABLE THAN OTHERS.”
“I wonder, which students are less-than- equal? My Special Education students in my Elementary classroom? Or maybe my own children and their first and fourth-grade classmates?
“I find it alarming that the quality of ANY CHILD would be determined by the amount of PROFIT their public-school education might generate for a third-party investor, and frightening that members of an organization which would make such a statement – in this case the Parthenon Group, would be involved in an advisory capacity or involved with ANY decision-making process at the highest levels of our district.
“Lest my concerns be dismissed on the basis that the PowerPoint I have provided you this evening may have been misconstrued or taken out of context, I would like to inform The Board of the content of the recommendations made by Parthenon in other school districts with which they have contracted.
“In Memphis / Shelby County Schools, the Parthenon Group recommended a reduction in educator salaries , retirement and health benefits, an increase in class sizes, and an expansion of so-called merit pay based upon standardized test scores.
“Similar recommendations were made by Parthenon for the Metro Nashville Public Schools, with the additional recommendation that certain student services, such as Special Education, be incrementally outsourced and privatized. Nashville began outsourcing special education functions in 2010 to the for-profit Spectrum Academy, a division of Educational Services of America.
Educate Nevada Now, which advocates for public schools, documents the damage that vouchers will cause to public schools and the great majority if students who attend them. ENN is funded by the Rogers Foundation.
ENN reports:
MOST NEVADA SCHOOL DISTRICTS TO FACE BUDGET DEFICITS
Las Vegas, NV – Proponents of the new “education savings account” (ESA) law, enacted in June by the Nevada Legislature, are touting ESAs as beneficial for public school children. On closer inspection, it is clear that ESA’s, the transfer of potentially large amounts of public funding to pay for tuition at private and religious schools and other entities, poses a grave threat to the 450,000 children enrolled in Nevada public schools.
The new law requires the State Treasurer to transfer public school funding to an ESA for any student who leaves Nevada’s public schools. These transferred public funds are similar to a “voucher” that can be used to pay for all or part of private or religious school tuition. But the Nevada ESA law goes beyond private school vouchers, allowing the public funds deposited into an ESA to pay for an unlimited array of services, fees and other expenses provided by any for-profit or non-profit “participating entity.”
The ESA law is intended and designed to divert millions of taxpayer dollars from public schools to pay for private and religious schooling. Moreover, it could support an unlimited variety of other services, with little or no accountability for education outcomes and the use of those dollars.
ESAs will impact Nevada’s public school children in three critical ways:
Reducing public school funding and resources,
Increasing student segregation and isolation in public schools,
Limited or no accountability for the private schools and other entities accepting ESA funds.
Reduced Resources
The ESA law requires the “statewide average basic support per pupil” — $5,100 per student and $5,710 for low-income, and students with disabilities — be deposited into each ESA from local district budgets, a process that will divert, over time, substantial resources from the public schools. Studies have shown that Nevada substantially underfunds K-12 public education. For example, calculations by the Guinn Center show that Nevada K-12 funding is over $3,000 per pupil, or $1.5 billion, below the amount determined adequate by a 2015 education cost study. A recent ENN analysis shows that, even after the Legislature increased funding in the biennium budget, most Nevada school districts, including Clark County, are once again facing shortfalls in their operating budgets for the 2015-16 school year.
ESAs will trigger an outflow of funds from already inadequate school district budgets, beginning in the 2015-16 school year. This loss of funding to ESAs will further impede districts’ ability to provide sufficient qualified teachers, reasonable class size, English language instruction, and gifted and talented programs. Furthermore, services for students academically at-risk and special education, will undermine the opportunity for public school students to achieve and graduate ready for college or the workforce.
As children leave public schools with ESA funds, some of the costs to educate those students, will leave with them. But, ESAs will cause a deficit for the local district, given the fixed costs of operating the school system for all children. As ESAs take funds out of the school system, the cost of educating the remaining students – e.g., providing teachers, maintaining buildings, offering rigorous curriculum – must still be covered by the district. As more ESAs are established, the budget deficits in the districts will increase, resulting in fewer teachers, larger class sizes, and cuts to gifted and talented, art and music, and other essential resources.
ESAs also create instability in district and school budgets. Districts will not know how many students will exit and how much money will be taken out of the budget during the school year. This unpredictability will make it difficult to manage public school budgets, as local administrators won’t know how many teachers and staff to hire, whether to fix buildings in disrepair, or how to allocate funds to provide sufficient resources to schools throughout the school year. It is also difficult for districts to increase or lower the teacher workforce during the school year, as hiring is done in the spring and summer before the start of the school year. Teacher vacancies and reliance on unqualified substitutes – already a major problem – could rise, impeding the recruitment and retention of effective teachers.
Student Isolation and Segregation
ESAs, by design, will increase segregation of students by disability, economic status, and other factors. The ESA law does not require the private and religious schools and other entities accepting ESA funds to educate students with special needs, does not prohibit discrimination, and does not ban selective admissions practices, such as pre-testing. Similar to the current record of Nevada charter schools, ESA schools will serve disproportionately fewer students with disabilities, students in poverty, and students learning English, than many public schools serving the same communities and neighborhoods.
Because the ESA per student amount does not cover the full cost of tuition at private and religious schools, families must have the personal means to cover any remaining tuition. This will also include the cost of fees, uniforms, books, transportation and other expenses associated with private and religious schooling.
The ESA law has no limit on the income of households that can obtain ESA funds. There is only a handful of private schools in Nevada with tuition low enough to be covered by $5,100 or $5,710, the annual ESA amount. ESAs are designed to be a “subsidy” by more affluent families who can already afford to send their children to selective private and religious schools. Conversely, ESAs are insufficient for students from low-income families, and those who need more costly English language instruction or special education services. At-risk students will stay in the public schools, therefore, increasing the segregation of students based on race, socio-economic status, disability, English language proficiency, and other factors in those schools.
No Accountability
The ESA law is vague, allowing ESA funds to pay for tuition, services, fees and other expenses, not just to private schools, but to any “participating entity,” including for-profit businesses. ESAs can be used not only for private or religious schools, but also online education, a tutor or tutoring facility, or, as one lawmaker testified, reimbursement for home schooling. The law also allows ESAs to buy textbooks and curriculum, pay for transportation, and even to reimburse financial institutions to manage the voucher “savings account” itself. Any ESA funds not spent on K-12 can be reserved for post-secondary tuition or fees.
In enacting this law, the Legislature cites no evidence that private and religious schools, online schooling – or the unlimited array of services offered by for-profit and non-profit providers – paid for by ESA funds, will produce better education outcomes for Nevada’s public school children.
The ESA law has virtually none of the accountability measures imposed by the Legislature on public schools. The law requires student tests in math and English language arts, but the tests can be any “norm-referenced achievement exams.” They need not be comparable to Nevada public school tests. There is no requirement that private school teachers be qualified or offer a curriculum based on Nevada common core standards. The law provides no way to know whether students are achieving sufficient outcomes, and there is no protection for parents and students from being victimized by low-performing, under-performing and non-performing schools or other “participating entities.”
The ESA law has no meaningful mechanism for state oversight or review, let alone the type of rigorous fiscal and education standards public schools must adhere to. For example, there is no mechanism for investigating and closing schools or sanctioning “participating entities” that fail to properly educate students.
Unlike Nevada public schools, the private and religious schools accepting ESA funds are not prohibited from discriminating based on race, gender or disability. Although they will receive funds appropriated by the Legislature for public education, the private institutions, businesses and other organizations that participate in the ESA program are exempt from the most basic protections that prevent discrimination of disadvantaged and vulnerable student populations.
Finally, the private for-profit or non-profit education providers that accept ESA funds can use their admissions rules, including competitive pretesting, transcript evaluation and letters of recommendation. These schools and entities are free to select students based on who they decide fit their religious or secular mission, culture and program. In contrast, Nevada public schools have a constitutional duty to educate all children, including those with disabilities and other special needs, and those children whom private and religious schools choose not to admit or decide to remove from school.
ESAs Harm Public Schools and Students
ESAs, by design, will weaken Nevada’s public education system and undermine the efforts of public school teachers, administrators and parents to improve outcomes for all students, including at-risk children. Over half of Nevada public school students are economically disadvantaged. Nevada has the largest percentage of English language learner students in the nation. ESAs will further concentrate and isolate those students in the public schools while taking away critical resources necessary for a quality education.
ESAs are a serious setback for Nevada public schools and students. ESAs will erode already inadequate funding and budgets, reduce essential education resources, widen achievement gaps and increase segregation. Most important, ESAs will impede progress in ensuring that all students have a meaningful opportunity for a sound basic education as guaranteed by the Nevada Constitution.
Contact: Stavan Corbett | Director of Outreach
702.657.3114 | scorbett@educatenevadanow.com
http://www.educatenevadanow.com
About ENN
Educate Nevada Now! (ENN) is a non-partisan coalition of education stakeholders whose mission is to bring equity to the distribution of Nevada State educational funding. ENN’s membership is comprised of education groups, teachers, community organizations, parents, and students across the State. The reform of the State education funding will ensure that all of Nevada’s children receive the same educational opportunities regardless of location or wealth of the community.
Amy Moore has a simple proposal for the governor and legislature of Iowa: If you won’t fund our state’s public schools adequately, then let us have the freedom to teach.
Moore teaches fifth grade and writes frequently for the Des Moines Register. She taught second grade for many years. She wrote this article after Governor Terry Branstad vetoed a $56 million increase in school funding. The legislature had approved the increased funding to compensate for having earlier granted an increase of 1.25%, not enough to cover rising fixed costs.
Republicans in the legislature–and the governor–expect the schools to do more with less.
Moore writes:
What improvements can educators make without cost? She has some ideas.
“The first thing that would make a great impact is to bring back play-based curriculum in the early childhood grades. There is a recent, almost comical, “new” movement being highlighted by the media to restore play in kindergarten. I say comical because some of those touting its importance are acting as if early childhood educators haven’t been screaming for years that traditional academic materials and learning approaches are not appropriate for our youngest.
The thing that is not funny at all is the lost childhood many of our babies are suffering as they are pushed to do things earlier than they should and in ways that are detrimental to their development. One positive that has emerged is newer research is proving little ones have neurological connections that are made when exploring their worlds through play and being forced to learn in other ways can actually be harmful.
“So if we want to improve our schools programs without purchasing anything, we should discontinue the use of any scripted curricular materials in the earliest grades. That is not how young kids learn. There should not be multiple choice tests, but instead only teacher created assessments along with observation.
“God bless those administrators who haven’t gotten caught up in data hysteria and who have allowed their teachers to continue to implement lessons that are suitable for little girls and boys. For the rest, we should allow our teachers to dust off their dramatic play areas, their sand tables, and their art easels and let them be used.
“Early childhood educators have known for years how to use these tools to enhance academic skills with what appears to others to be “just play” and, at the same time, our young ones will again learn essential life skills such as problem solving, cooperation, communication, persistence and creativity. The most important thing of all that children can gain through play is a lifelong love of learning. There is such a thing as the wrong kind of teaching. It’s happening in many of our schools and we have the power to stop it. It won’t cost a dime.”
Here is another no-cost idea:
“No single textbook company or method of teaching can be a good fit for all. If districts have spent thousands of dollars purchasing materials that all are expected to follow then that’s great. Have them available to the teachers to use at their own discretion, in their own time, with their own supplements as they see fit. That’s called teaching. Not only will it not demand additional money but it will reduce the exodus of great educators from the profession because they will once again be allowed to do the job for which they were trained. It will set us back on the path to the highest quality of teaching and learning possible.”
Moore advises teachers to get involved in the Presidential primary. Study the candidates’ records on education. Ask them questions.
“The last thing is an easy one for those of us in the first-in-the-nation caucus state. We need to pay attention to the political races and, ultimately, cast our vote for candidates who will make schools a priority. We have the opportunity to shake hands with many of these people. We can ask them directly how they plan to fight poverty and inequity, to strengthen public schools, to keep the decision-making process away from business interests and with educators….
“Have these candidates supported taking away teacher job protections? Have they promoted a test-based culture? Have they allowed taxpayer money to go to for-profit schools? We need to ask about their beliefs about using artificial measures such as test scores to judge teachers. Showing up at a forum and posing these types of questions will cost us only the gas money to get there.”
Good advice for parents and teachers in every state.
Troy LaRaviere, principal of Blaine Elementary School in Chicago, challenges Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s claim that he could not avoid layoffs and could not fund educators’ pensions.
Not true, writes LaRaviere.
“However — as I understand it — we do not want to stop at just
being functional. We want to be effective. We want to be excellent.
“For that to happen, we need early at-home interventions for preschool-age children from low-income households, smaller student-to-teacher ratios, thoughtful training for teachers, a competitive compensation and benefits package to attract skilled professionals. We need a rich arts curriculum, exceptional educators whose efforts are focused on the children who come to us less prepared than their peers, a rigorous curriculum tailored to local student needs and the thoughtful use of technology in schools.
“The 2013 budget cuts meant that many of our students lost some of those things — the resources that move a school from being functional to being excellent. The 2015 budget cuts will mean that my students — and students across Chicago — will lose even more.
“Politicians frame this as pension payment vs. classroom investment — as if those were the only two expenses our tax dollars are used for and one of them has to be sacrificed. This is patently false. City Hall has had many opportunities for sacrifice in other areas, but it has refused to make those sacrifices.
“Mayor Rahm Emanuel had a chance to sacrifice the diversion of $55 million in taxes to a hotel near McCormick Place. He could have invested some of that tax increment financing money in the pension system instead.”
LaRaviere lists other savings that were there for the Mayor, but he never asked business to sacrifice. Only the children.
He writes:
“Emanuel says one thing, but his behavior says another. He has put investor profits over investing in our teachers and their classrooms.
“He wants us to get used to that. I will never get used to that.
“And neither should you.”
By the way, the tag line on Principal LaRaviere’s email is: “You can’t put students first if you put teachers last.”
Martin Levine reports in “Nonprofit Quarterly” that charter frauds are multiplying, yet the U.S. Department of Education fecklessly plans to increase charter school funding by 48%.
The frauds are facilitated because of inadequate supervision by state or local agencies. Unscrupulous charter operators take advantage of deregulation to steal taxpayers’ dollars or make lucrative contracts with friends, relatives, or their own corporations.
Levine reports:
“Six distinct categories were needed for this report to capture the practices of the charter school operators that were studied:
*Charter operators using funds illegally for personal gain
*School revenue used to illegally support other charter operator businesses
*Mismanagement that puts children in actual or potential danger
*Charters illegally requesting public dollars for services not provided
*Charter operators illegally inflating enrollment to boost revenues; and
*Charter operators mismanaging public funds and schools
“At the federal level, despite the apparent misuse of such large sums of scarce funds and the lack of adequate oversight mechanisms, the 2016 budget that is working its way through Congress includes a significant increase in funding with little if any increase of management. According to Jonas Persson of PR Watch, “Despite drawing repeated criticism from the Office of the Inspector General for suspected waste and inadequate financial controls within the federal Charter Schools Program—designed to create, expand, and replicate charter schools—the U.S. Department of Education (ED) is poised to increase its funding by 48 percent in FY 2016.”
Most people have no idea about the privatization movement. They don’t know that the narrative of crisis (“our schools are failing, failing, failing”)–repeated again and again–is intended to clear the way for privatization.
Peter Greene explains the insidious plan here.
Step one, create a crisis.
Step two, take power away from the community, dissolve the local school board, give it to the mayor, the governor.
Step three: cash in.
It is a universal truth, well known, that when budget cuts are imposed by the state, teachers of the arts are the first to go. I recently met with a leader of the arts community in Houston who told me that she wanted to make a gift of art supplies but could not few elementary schools with art teachers.
Some advocates for the arts–music education, especially, claim that the study of music increases test scores.
Peter Greene says: Don’t do that! See here too.
There so many important reasons to treasure music, and the pursuit of higher test scores is not one of them.
“Music is universal. It’s a gabillion dollar industry, and it is omnipresent. How many hours in a row do you ever go without listening to music? Everywhere you go, everything you watch– music. Always music. We are surrounded in it, bathe in it, soak in it. Why would we not want to know more about something constantly present in our lives? Would you want to live in a world without music? Then why would you want to have a school without music?
Listening to music is profoundly human. It lets us touch and understand some of our most complicated feelings. It helps us know who we are, what we want, how to be ourselves in the world. And because we live in an age of vast musical riches from both past and present, we all have access to exactly the music that suits our personality and mood. Music makes the fingers we can use to reach into our own hearts.
Making music is even more so. With all that music can do just for us as listeners, why would we not want to unlock the secrets of expressing ourselves through it? We human beings are driven to make music as surely as we are driven to speak, to touch, to come closer to other humans. Why would we not want to give students the chance to learn how to express themselves in this manner?….
“In music, everyone’s a winner. In sports, when two teams try their hardest and give everything they’ve got, there’s just one winner. When a group of bands or choirs give their all, everybody wins. Regrettably, the growth of musical “competitions” has led to many programs that have forgotten this — but music is the opposite of a zero-sum game. The better some folks do, the better everybody does. In music, you can pursue excellence and awesomeness without having to worry that you might get beat or defeated or humiliated. Everybody can be awesome….
“Do not defend a music program because it’s good for other things. That’s like defending kissing because it gives you stronger lip muscles for eating soup neatly. Defend it because music is awesome in ways that no other field is awesome. Defend it because it is music, and that’s all the reason it needs. As Emerson wrote, “Beauty is its own excuse for being.” A school without music is less whole, less human, less valuable, less complete. Stand up for music as itself, and stop making excuses.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 