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Moody’s Investor Advice: Charters Draining Public Schools’ Budgets

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2015 //
9

Moody’s Investors Servicrs paints a gloomy picture of the effects of charter schools on public schools in Pennsylvania.

 

Moody’s writes:

 

“Some fiscally stressed Pennsylvania public school districts have come up with new approaches for combating a primary pressure point: competition from charter schools, Moody’s Investor Service says in a new report. Some of the plans would be transformative, such as a proposal to send all students to other school districts and pay tuition, or to operate a public school district as all-charter.

 

“Some financially stressed districts have offered recovery proposals that fundamentally alter the nature of their public school district operations,” says Moody’s Assistant Vice President — Analyst, Dan Seymour. “The bold plans face near-term execution challenges, but are positive in the long run as some of these districts would continue to deteriorate without significant structural changes. The strong measures are more likely to lead to long-term financial and operational soundness than continuing on the existing course.”

 

While charter advocates assert that competition will cause public schools to improve, this is not what is happening in Pennsylvania. Charters make alluring promises and drain away students and funding. The public schools, with less resources, goes into a tailspin, soon finding that it must cut programs and services, making it less able to compete with charters.

 

The Legislature passed a law in 2012 allowing the Governor to appoint an emergency manager to take over the district, suspending local control. Four districts currently are in receivership: York City, Duquesne, Harrisburg, and Chester-Upland.

 

The Moody’s report sees the state takeover as a plus because it overrides local opposition to strong remedies. One of those strong remedies, as we have seen in York City, is to turn the children and schools over to an out-of-state for-profit charter chain.

 

Do you hear the canary in the mine? The competition with charters, which have an inexperienced and low-wage staff, increases the financial pressure on districts. The more students leave for charters, the less able is the district to compete because of fixed costs and experienced teachers who are paid as professionals, not temps. The business answer: shut down the district, turn all the schools into charters, or send the students to other districts.

 

The end result is the same: the replacement of community public schools by privately managed charters staffed by temps. If the chain can’t make a profit, it will close its doors and leave. What happens then?

 

Is this a way to “improve” education? Not for students. Not for communities.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Pennsylvania

UNICEF: Rich Kids in Poor Countries Get the Most Money for Education

By dianeravitch
January 24, 2015 //
18

A new report released by UNICEF at the World Economic Forum in Davos says that inequitable funding is an obstacle to educational equity. Rich kids in poor countries get more funding from the government than poor kids. You may know that the United States is one of the few countries where more public money is spent on affluent students than on poor students. In most other advanced nations, more money is spent on the neediest children. David Sirota wrote about the report for the International Business Times.

 

Sirota writes:

 

The trend documented by the report shows poor, developing-world countries mimicking a trend in the United States, which stands out as one of the only industrialized countries that devotes less public money to educating students from low-income families than on educating students from high-income families.

 

According to a recent analysis by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, it is one of the few economically developed nations that tends to spend more public resources to educate wealthy students than to educate low-income students. A 2011 U.S. Department of Education report found that in the United States “many high-poverty schools receive less than their fair share of state and local funding, leaving students in high-poverty schools with fewer resources than schools attended by their wealthier peers.”

 

Sirota points out that one of the cosponsors of the report is the Gates Foundation, which “has been criticized for using its partnerships with other organizations to promote a particular education ideology.”

 

And he adds:

 

In the United States, the foundation has specifically championed privately run charter schools, which often siphon resources from traditional public schools. The foundation has also promoted the Common Core curriculum, which has been criticized as a top-down, one-size-fits-all approach to education content. Both the curriculum and the larger shift to technology focused charter schools could have commercial benefits for Microsoft, the firm founded by Bill Gates.

 

When asked whether Unicef is prescribing a similar approach to international education aid for low-income countries, meaning charter schools, Common Core-style curriculum and a focus on technology, Brown first touted “the right of individual countries to make their own decisions about how they shape their own education system according to their needs and their economic policies and economic objectives.”

 

However, he seemed to echo some of the core themes of the Gates Foundation, touting what he called “international best practices … which learn from the experience of charter schools.”

 

He said lawmakers should be looking at “how we can disseminate the best practices that exist in some countries and persuade other countries that they are worth looking at.”

 

“We are learning that the quality of teachers, which is what the Gates Foundation has emphasized matters, the quality of head teachers and leadership in schools matters, the curriculum itself is an issue that has to be debated at all times because you’ve got to learn from what works and what doesn’t work … and how you apply technology and use it most effectively,” he said.

 

Curious that the spokesman for the report said that charter schools exemplify “international best practices.” One wonders if he was thinking of “no excuses” charters, or Gulen charters, or for-profit charters.

Categories Charter Schools, Funding, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, International

Jersey Jazzman: Are Hoboken Charters Doing More with Less? Part 2

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2015 //
3

Jersey Jazzman reviews the funding of Hoboken’s charters and finds that they have outside funders who give them additional aid, sometimes very substantial aid. Suburban schools, he acknowledges, raise money through their PTA and parent volunteers (but not many get large gifts from Goldman Sachs and Barclay’s, for example).

 

He writes:

 

– See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2015/01/in-hoboken-charter-schools-rule-part-ii.html#sthash.CRkQlgNL.dpufMy point here is that I would never say that what the parents of Hoboken’s charter schools are doing is in any way wrong; in fact, I would be shocked if these organizations didn’t exist. Of course parents hold fundraisers for their kids’ schools; of course they leverage their connections to benefit programs that serve their children. Any parent who loves their child and has the means does this. There is nothing wrong with this.

 

But here’s the thing:

 

I don’t see anyone rational making the claim that suburban schools “do more with less” when their communities spend so much on their children’s entire education — yet that is the precise claim of Hoboken’s charter sector.

 

One of the myths of charter school funding in New Jersey — often perpetuated by groups with little understanding of how school financing works — is that charters get less funding than they should because they are denied access to state aid and debt service available to public school districts.

 

Leaving aside the point that charters shouldn’t get much of this aid (why should a charter school get transportation aid if it doesn’t pay for transportation costs?), the truth is that charter school funding “gaps” are much more the product of differences in student population characteristics, which the state uses to calculate aid shares. This is a big topic and I’m working now on some pieces to bring this issue into focus.

 

If a school has fewer of the high-needs students, it gets less state aid. That’s elementary.

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Funding, New Jersey

Mississippi: Legislators Don’t Want to Fund Impoverished Schools

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2015 //
8

According to a fine article in “The Hechinger Report” by Jackie Mader, many schools in Mississippi lack the basics to provide equal opportunity or even a minimally decent education. Some districts have decrepit facilities and can’t afford textbooks or technology. Pay for educators is low, and class sizes are large.

“Nearly 200,000 voters signed a petition to amend Mississippi’s constitution, adding to it language that would require the state “legislature to fund an adequate and efficient school system of free public schools.” Known as Amendment 42, its advocates consider it the best hope for holding the state accountable for fully funding persistently failing schools.”

However, a majority of the legislature passed a competing amendment.

“But Republican legislators introduced an alternative amendment that was passed by the Mississippi House of Representatives in a 64-57 vote on Tuesday. It deleted any reference to making the state responsible for providing funding to schools. Pending approval from the Senate, both initiatives will go on the ballot this November, making voters choose between these two similar-sounding yet antithetical amendments.”

Mississippi has very low scores. Higher standards won’t help. Adequate resources would.

Categories Funding, Mississippi

New York: What to Do with an Extra $5 Billion

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2015 //
34

Ira Shor, a professor at the City University of New York, read that the state has an unexpected surplus of $5 billion. What should be done with this windfall?

 

He writes:

 

 

“Here’s a scary thought: New York State’s politicians suddenly have an extra $5 billion to spend,” began a NY TImes editorial January 15. “Albany’s treasury is fat with the state’s share of fines paid by financial institutions for past misconduct.” The Times’ editors warn against wasting this windfall from crooked banks and insurance companies on “politicians’ pet projects.” With NY’s government long-designated by the Times as one of the most corrupt state governments around, the Times proposes some good places for the feckless politicians to spend the cash. Sadly but not surprisingly, public education does NOT show up on this newspaper’s list for worthy investments of the windfall.

 

The Times’ good uses for the money include drinking-water and waste-water infrastructure, capital infusion into New York City’s mass transit used by 8.7 million daily, long-overdue road and bridge repairs, and buying up farmland to protect against commercial development, but the great need for higher public education funding is ignored. This is especially outrageous given that NY State was ordered in 2006 by Appellate and Supreme Courts to supplement habitually under-funded NY City schools by several billion dollars a year, following a 13-year lawsuit finally won by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, only to be tossed aside when the State claimed fiscal distress after the Wall St. collapse of 2008.

 

How could public education use this sudden windfall? Smaller class size for starters, ably argued for years by a hero of public schools, Leonie Haimson. Small classes especially enable close teacher-mentoring important for closing the racial gap. Moreso, the windfall could finance teachers’ aides in every classroom who enhance teaching and learning. The $5 billion could also go for wrap-around social services which our poorest students much need— winter-coats and eyeglasses, as well as school-based nurses, social workers, psychologists, guidance staff, and college counselors. If the windfall was used simply and finally to house our record number of homeless families and children, that too would be a benefit to our public schools where most of these children attend.

 

Instead, NY Gov. Cuomo has imposed hardships on public schooling, especially on NY City, thanks to a State law compelling the City to finance buildings for all privatized charter schools, in a City where real estate is astronomical. In recent years, the State as well as the City found hundreds of millions to subsidize private sports arenas but not for investing in public education or in homeless housing. The Times should be the first to remind the Governor and the State legislature of these needs and of prejudicial policies against public education. The teachers’ unions should have been already protesting the failure to include education in the windfall agenda.

 

This dismissal of public education continues the long-term hollowing-out of the public sector, undermining the capacity of our public schools, directly enhancing the position of even weak private charters, which in today’s policy climate are lavishly over-funded and startlingly under-regulated.

 

 

Categories Funding, New York

The Astonishing Cost of Ohio’s Lowest Performing School

By dianeravitch
January 11, 2015 //
16

Ohio’s most expensive failing school is ECOT, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow. It has theoqesthfaduation rate of any school in the state, yet is never held accountable. It is financed by taking funds away from much more successful schools and districts.

“The Columbus Dispatch wrote recently of the academic failures of the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) where the graduation rate of 38% is among the worst of any school in the state. Among Ohio’s 613 traditional public school districts , the lowest graduation rate is 60.9%. In addition, ECOT received all Fs and one D on the state’s most recent report card.

“Despite its abysmal performance record, ECOT continues to expand. More than 14,500 children are currently enrolled, making ECOT the equivalent of the 10th largest school district in the state. The Dispatch story noted that ECOT founder William Lager has donated more than $1 million to Ohio politicians in the last five years as his school has grown exponentially.

“Information at KnowYourCharter.com helps clarify the burden that local public schools must bear to cover the costs of students who chose to attend ECOT. Kids in all 88 Ohio counties are impacted. More than 95% of school districts – 586 of 613 districts – have students and money being transferred to ECOT. As one of the state’s 9 statewide e-schools and one of the country’s largest for-profit K-12 schools, ECOT’s poor performance is exacerbated by its extraordinary financial impact on children throughout the state.”

Categories Funding, Ohio, Virtual Charter Schools

Philadelphia Crisis: Shortage of School Nurses

By dianeravitch
January 8, 2015 //
8

Since 2011, the number of school nurses in the Philadelphia public schools has declined by 40%. At a meeting of the School Reform Commission, the appointed board that runs the district, nurses and principals testified about the dangers to children posed by the lack of nurses.

In 2013, a 12-year-old child died of an asthma attack at school; there was no nurse available that day.

In 2014, a 7-year-old child collapsed and died in school; there was no nurse available that day.

How many more children must die before the state supplies the funding to staff every school with a nurse every day?

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding, Philadelphia

Jerry Brown: A Real Reform Governor

By dianeravitch
January 7, 2015 //
28

Governor Jerry Brown’s Inaugural address includes the following remarks about education. Governor Brown understands that schools need adequate funding to succeed. One of his biggest challenges when he took office was to begin to restore the billions that had been cut from public schools by his predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. I think he is wrong about Common Core, which caused California to ditch some of the best state standards in the nation and will draw hundreds of millions, if not billions, out of strained school budgets (Los Angeles was about to spend over &1 billion on iPads for Common Core testing until the deal fell apart a few months ago). But, reasonable people differ, and time will tell whether the investment in Common Core is worth it.

Governor Brown said:

“Educating the next generation is fundamental to our collective well-being. An issue that has plagued our schools for decades is the enormous barrier facing children from low-income families. When my father was governor, he sought to remedy the wide inequities among different school districts by calling for equalization of funding. His efforts were not successful.

“Now – decades later – we have finally created a much fairer system of school funding, called the Local Control Funding Formula. Under the provisions of this law, state funds are directed to school districts based on the needs of their students. Districts will get significantly more funds based on the number of students from foster care, low-income families and non-English-speaking parents. This program also breaks with decades of increasing centralization by reducing state control in favor of local flexibility. Clear goals are set, and their enforcement is entrusted to parents and local officials. This puts California in the forefront of educational reform.

“After years of underfunding and even borrowing from our local schools, the state now has significantly increased its financial support for education. Next year schools will receive $65.7 billion, a 39 percent increase in four years.

“The tasks ahead are daunting: making sure that the new system of local control works; recruiting and training tens of thousands of teachers; mastering the Common Core Curriculum; and fostering the creativity needed to inspire students. Teachers need to be held accountable but never forget: they have a tough job to do. They need our encouragement, not endless regulations and micro-management from afar.

“With respect to education beyond high school, California is blessed with a rich and diverse system. Its many elements serve a vast diversity of talents and interests. While excellence is their business, affordability and timely completion is their imperative. As I’ve said before, I will not make the students of California the default financiers of our colleges and universities. To meet our goals, everyone has to do their part: the state, the students and the professors. Each separate institution cannot be all things to all people, but the system in its breadth and diversity, through real cooperation among its segments, can well provide what Californians need and desire…..”

Categories Budget Cuts, California, Education Reform, Funding

Detroit: The Man Whose Vision Inspired the Catherine Ferguson Academy (RIP)

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2015 //
1

This article is a very interesting account of the life and accomplishments of Paul Weertz. He saved a block in Detroit by his love of agriculture and horticulture. He is of interest to readers of this blog because he was one of the leaders of the Catherine Ferguson Academy for pregnant girls in Detroit, now defunct.

 

CFA was a Detroit public school that enrolled pregnant girls. According to the article, it was incredibly successful and all of its graduates went on to college. The focus of the school that differentiated it from other schools was its agriculture program, which Paul Weertz created and nurtured. The students were very invested in raising their own food, and this was a motivating factor for the girls.

 

But despite the school’s success, the emergency manager decided to shut it down and turn it over to a charter operator (who had political connections).  At some point in this process, when it appeared the school was doomed, Rachel Maddow took an interest and reported on this situation. After a few years as a charter, the Catherine Ferguson Academy was closed permanently.

 

As the article tells the story:

 

Weertz is understandably proud of the success of his block of Farnsworth. But his other success story, his role as the teacher who helped build up the agricultural program at Catherine Ferguson Academy, ended badly. He says it had always been a struggle to justify the funding for a school that combined parent-focused teaching, day care, and an intense agricultural component, but the fact remains that all of the academy’s students went on to college, and the scholars’ children received excellent care. But instead of being imitated, it was terminated.

 

The beginning of the end came when a Lansing-appointed emergency manager stepped in and announced the school would be closed. This resulted in a battle that left the school open, but in the hands of a charter operator. The charter company, run by Blair Evans, brother of current Wayne County Executive Warren Evans, closed the school after running it for a few years.

 

“Well it’s always been ‘too much money,'” he says. “That’s why there were only five schools like that in the country. Pregnancy is the leading cause of dropout for young women. You think they’d have these at every state in the union, but it’s just a discrimination issue. You can hassle poor women or pregnant women; they’re not gonna say anything. With pregnant girls, we can somehow say, ‘It’s your fault.’

 

“It’s a sensitive issue to me because I’ve always felt like I donated a lot of my labor and material, so to speak, because it was the public. Blair Evans is a nice guy, but I’m not donating my time to him. I thought it was the public school. It’s like cleaning up a public park and finding out it’s a gated community. What happened there? So that’s the way it happened at Catherine Ferguson, and it was kind of a media frenzy. So many of us walked away like, ‘That wasn’t a victory,’ but that’s how the media presented it. ‘They’re saving the school and it’s OK!’ No one is doing a story now about what happened to the school. What is Detroit doing with their pregnant kids now?”

 

Rachel Maddow, you are needed now! Time for a follow-up story!

 

Categories Detroit, Education Reform, Funding, Joy

Jersey Jazzman on Impoverished Camden, Where Charters Always Have Money

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2015 //
10

Camden, New Jersey, is one of the poorest cities in the state of New Jersey. The public schools are dilapidated. But charter schools are not dilapidated. Jersey Jazzman tells how one entrepreneur in Camden was able to raise $10 million through a bond issue to build a state-of-the-art facility, with a new cafeteria, science labs, a fitness center, and a health clinic.

 

He writes:

 

If you know anything about Camden and its schools, you’ll know that this is quite a story — a story that shows, once again, that charter schools play by a completely different set of rules, often to the detriment of public schools.

 

Let’s start with some background: I spent a lot of time last year telling the story of Camden’s LEAP Academy University Charter School and its founder, Gloria Bonilla-Santiago. The tale is long and twisted, but let me give the quick highlights:
Despite a track record of regularly missing Adequate Yearly Progress (and academic outcomes that even today lag compared to schools across New Jersey), LEAP was always a favorite of then-Acting Education Commissioner and school privatizing guru Chris Cerf:

 

*LEAP actually lost its tax-exempt status for a while in 2013 because it failed to file its tax returns. This was serious because $8.5 million in bonds had been issued from the Delaware River Port Authority for the school’s expansion. LEAP eventually got its tax-exempt status back, but not before blaming the debacle on the IRS.
*But the failure to file taxes for three years was the least of the questionable behaviors surrounding LEAP. The school illegally recruited athletes back in 2005, leading to a severe sanction from the NJISAA. The school engaged in unfair labor practices, leading to extraordinary levels of teacher turnover. LEAP had to repay the NJDOE when it used federal funds for non-allowable expenses. A LEAP employee filed a lawsuit, claiming he had been forced to do personal work for Bonilla-Santiago at her home (I can’t find any follow-up reporting on the status of this suit).
*But perhaps the biggest scandal coming from LEAP came from the Philadelphia Inquirer’s reporting on Bonilla-Santiago’s live-in boyfriend, Michele Pastorello:
When Camden’s LEAP Academy University Charter School compelled its new food-service management company to retain the school’s executive chef and give him a $24,000 raise, LEAP also had to pay a $151,428 penalty to its previous vendor, documents show.
Including Michele Pastorello’s new $95,000 salary, LEAP has spent nearly $250,000 this school year to keep him employed as executive chef. The position typically pays about $40,000, according to industry experts.
Pastorello is the live-in boyfriend of LEAP founder and board chairwoman Gloria Bonilla-Santiago. His raise, as well as the fee paid to the previous management company, Aramark, now are under review by the school’s board of trustees. [emphasis JJ]
Not surprisingly, a subcommittee of LEAP’s board found that nothing was wrong with this deal.

 

JJ adds, with careful documentation, comparing LEAP charter school to the Camden public schools:

 

LEAP serves a substantially different student body than the Camden Public Schools. We can argue about whether that’s acceptable or not, certainly acknowledging that LEAP’s student body has far more children in economic disadvantage than its suburban neighbors. But let’s get back to those bonds…

Because what I don’t understand is why there is plenty of money ready and available for charter schools like LEAP — which serves fewer children with special needs — to expand, while its neighboring public schools in Camden have to wait years just to get enough funding to keep from falling apart.

Why is Wall Street so eager to give a school like LEAP — a school with a history of not filing taxes, engaging in unfair labor practices, and paying favored employees far more than market wages — money with which to expand? So eager that, according to this Wall Street Journal story, LEAP is getting a remarkably good deal?
The school is paying a rate of 6.3% on longer-term debt. Comparable borrowing costs in 2009 were about 7.6%, according to the Local Initiatives Support Corp., which advises charter schools on finances.
Do you think that maybe the street came to a conclusion about LEAP? That maybe it doesn’t need to jack up interest rates for their bonds, because — as the school’s history shows time and again — it simply can do no wrong? – See more at:

 

 

http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2014/12/theres-always-more-money-for-charter.html#sthash.NcIzEwPK.dpuf

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, New Jersey, Privatization
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