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BREAKING: Federal Judge Issues Injunction Against DeVos’ Coronavirus Aid Rule

By dianeravitch
August 22, 2020 //
7

A federal judge blocked Betsy DeVos’ rule requiring states to split their coronavirus aid with private schools , regardless of need or student poverty levels. For DeVos, the CARES Act was yet another opportunity to divert money from public schools to private schools.

Andrew Ujifusa of Education Week reports:


A federal judge has ruled against U.S. Department of Education in a lawsuit over how much coronavirus aid public schools must set aside for private school students.

Public school groups and officials argued that the interim final rule from the department unfairly deprives their schools and disadvantaged students of crucial funding during the pandemic.

In a preliminary injunction halting enforcement and implementation of the rule while she considers the case pitting Washington state against the Education Department, U.S. District Court Judge Barbara J. Rothstein harshly and repeatedly rejected the department’s arguments. She said that the agency subverted the intent of Congress and hurt students most affected by the pandemic, and that Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos did not have the authority to issue the rule in the first place.

The Education Department’s interim final rule, publicized in June and formally issued in July, pushes school districts to reserve money under the CARES Act, the federal coronavirus stimulus plan, for services to all local private school students, irrespective of their backgrounds. That represents a major departure from how education law typically governs that arrangement, in which federal money for what’s known as “equitable services” goes to disadvantaged, at-risk private school students.

But Rothstein attacked DeVos’ rule as “blind to the realities of this extraordinary pandemic and the very purpose of the CARES Act: to provide emergency relief where it is most needed.”

“Forcing the State to divert funds from public schools ignores the extraordinary circumstances facing the State and its most disadvantaged students,” she said.

The injunction in the case, issued Friday in the Western District of Washington, represents a setback for the department and a win for public school advocates. Rothstein does not say that her order extends beyond Washington state to other jurisdictions, but she also does not explicitly limit it to the state. And it could be a bad sign for the department in two other lawsuits about the rule, even if its power to change spending decisions on the ground is unclear.

In a statement Saturday, Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., the chairman of the House education committee, applauded Rothstein’s ruling and asked DeVos “to abandon its unlawful equitable services rule and finally provide schools the clarity and resources they need…”

DeVos and the department have justified the rule by arguing that the virus has hurt students of all backgrounds, regardless of where they went to school. Public school officials and congressional Democrats have countered that the rule improperly diverts money from disadvantaged students to ultimately benefit private schools, and that it defies the intent of Congress.

Rothstein sided with the second group.

“The nature of this pandemic is that its consequences have fallen most heavily on the nation’s most vulnerable populations, including its neediest students,” she stated. “The funding provided throughout the CARES Act, and in particular to schools, is desperately and urgently needed to provide some measure of relief from the pandemic’s harms, many of which cannot be undone.”

Rothstein pointed to separate CARES funding intended primarily for small businesses that private schools could access.

The judge referred to the Paycheck Protection Program, which supplied millions to many private schools, some of which are richly endowed. Charter schools got funding from both the money set aside for public schools and the PPP, which specifically excluded public schools.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Funding, Privatization

Biden and Harris May Forge a New Path on Education

By dianeravitch
August 22, 2020 //
18

Evie Blad of Education Week writes that a Biden-Harris administration may forge a new path on education issues. They have pledged to increase funding, regulate charters, and back away from standardized testing. They also have pledged to support the right to collective bargaining. This heartens advocates of public education, but frightens the corporate reformers who have controlled education for 20 years.

Twenty years of failed education policy is enough!

Democrats for Education Reform and the Center for American Policy, both committed to high/stakes testing and charters, are worried.

As he campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination, former Vice President Joe Biden pledged that, if elected, his education department would be a sharp departure from that of President Donald Trump.

Rather than promoting private school choice, as the Republican incumbent has, Biden pledged to dramatically increase federal aid to schools, including ambitious calls to triple the Title I funding targeted at students from low-income households and to “fully fund” the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

But, as Biden accepts his party’s nomination this week, there also are signs that his potential future administration wouldn’t return lock step to the education policies of President Barack Obama. And some of a Biden administration’s education policy goals could take a back seat to the pressing matter of helping schools navigate the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, which may alter their operations and threaten their budgets for years to come.

Though he’s campaigned heavily on his experience as Obama’s vice president, Biden has departed on some key issues from that self-described supporter of education reform. Obama’s education department championed rigorous state education standards, encouraged states to lift their caps on public charter schools to apply for big federal Race to the Top grants, and offered charter school conversions as an improvement strategy for struggling schools.

By contrast, Biden called for a scale-back of standardized testing at a 2019 MSNBC education forum, and he criticized their use in teacher evaluations, a key policy goal of the Obama administration. Under the leadership of Biden’s campaign, Democrats formally introduced a party platform this week that criticizes high-stakes testing and calls for new restrictions on charter schools.

How much Biden’s policy would depart from the last Democratic president’s is up for debate. But the Every Student Succeeds Act, the federal education law Obama signed at the end of his last term, may offer levers to make some policy changes.

“Your job as a vice president is to toe the line of your boss,” said Julian Vasquez Heilig, the dean of the college of education at the University of Kentucky and a board member of the Network for Public Education, a progressive advocacy group. If Biden chooses, “he can be his own person on education.”

Praise and Concern

That suggestion of a new direction has won praise from groups like national teachers’ unions, which called for the resignation of Obama’s long-serving education secretary, Arne Duncan, when Duncan advanced a push for teacher evaluations and other reforms.

National Education Association President Lily Eskelsen García called Biden and his running mate and one-time rival for the nomination, California Sen. Kamala Harris, a “dream team” that “respects educators and will listen to those who know the names of the kids in the classrooms.”

But Biden’s priorities, and the absence of discussions of school improvement during the Democratic primary, have also been met with concern from some education groups.

“If we only talk about the money side of the equation, that’s not enough by itself,” said Shavar Jeffries, president of Democrats for Education Reform. “That’s where we need our president to be a leader and hold those institutions accountable.”

The organization, which supports charter schools and data-driven school accountability efforts, has praised Biden’s push for more resources, but it has sounded the alarm about other changes recommended in the party platform.

That platform language reflects some of Biden’s comments during the primaries. In recorded interviews with the NEA, for example, he said a lot of charter schools are “significantly underperforming” and that charter schools “cannot come at the expense of the public school.”

Neither Biden nor Harris included language on charters in their plans as candidates. But the platform language-created with input from a “unity task force” assembled by the campaigns of Biden and Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders-calls for a ban on federal funding for “for-profit charter businesses.”

The language also calls for “conditioning federal funding for new, expanded charter schools or for charter school renewals on a district’s review of whether the charter will systematically underserve the neediest students,” which has alarmed charter advocates who say the publicly funded, independently managed schools already face sufficient accountability.

Charter schools are largely governed through state and local policy. But a presidential administration can help shape public debate on the issue. And a Biden administration could scale back support for charter schools in its discretionary grant priorities and regulations or in its proposed budgets.

Time for fresh thinking! Time to build strong child-centered, community-based schools and throw off the obsession with standardized testing and privatization.

Categories Accountability, Biden, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Privatization, Race to the Top, Real Education, Standardized Testing, Unions

Jan Resseger: The Joy of Seeing Democrats Acknowledge the Importance of Public Schools

By dianeravitch
August 21, 2020 //
18

Jan Resseger points out the contrast between the two major parties’s treatment of public schools. Trump treats them as a babysitting service. Joe Biden’s wife Jill gave her Convention speech from a high school where she was a teacher. Trump and DeVos pledge to defund them. Biden and Harris pledge a massive infusion of funding. Trump pledges four more years of massive neglect. Biden and Harris pledge respect.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Biden, Funding, Supporting public schools, Trump, Vouchers

New York: Demand Cuomo Restore School Funding!

By dianeravitch
August 20, 2020 //
12

Governor Cuomo slashed school funding across the state of New York. Other governors have found ways to protect their schools and children. Please sign the petition of the Network for Public Education Action, calling on Governor Cuomo to restore school funding. Schools cannot safely reopen with less money.

Categories Cuomo, Andrew, Funding, Health, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, New York, Safety

South Carolina: The Hoax of School Choice

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2020 //
10

Jen Gibson, who lives in Charleston, writes about how school choice will drain resources from underfunded public schools while not providing access to better schools or better education:

Normally this time of year, my son and I are on the hunt for new shoes and the perfect pencil pouch. This year, we are struggling with masks and stocking up on hand sanitizer.

Like most parents, our family is wrestling with decisions about our work schedules, our vulnerable parents, and our child’s academic and social needs. All of our energy is focused on supporting students, teachers and our community during this unprecedented crisis.

That is why I was shocked and saddened when U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, Gov. Henry McMaster and S.C. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-Daniel Island, took advantage of this crisis to declare war on our public schools with their coordinated effort to move tax dollars allocated for public schools into private schools.

Under the guise of giving parents a choice, deceitful Republicans are trying to divert millions of our tax dollars to subsidize elite private schools. They argue that low-income students and parents deserve the choice to opt out of their poorly-performing public school. I have bad news for them. Research proves that vouchers for private schools will not improve educational outcomes for students.

Forget the fact that vouchers won’t even pay for the basic tuition at a local private school. Let’s talk about book fees, uniform costs, fieldtrip fees, transportation costs and the loss of income for the parent who no longer has access to before- and after-school childcare. Most students will stay in their neighborhood public school because a private school education is still out of reach.

Those who can scrape together the additional money to add to the government assistance will have to navigate the complicated world of evaluating private schools. These schools do not have to meet the same education standards as our public schools and are not legally required to provide accommodations to students with special needs.

In South Carolina, the money to pay for the tax credit comes directly from the budget of the public school the student would have attended. Tax money collected for public schools which are supposed to benefit the entire community will instead benefit individual students and private businesses. This weakens our public schools, and it does not guarantee individual students will have access to a better education.

Since 2008, South Carolina House members have not fully funded the Base Student Cost. They use a loophole in the law to avoid appropriating the actual cost of providing every student with even a minimally-adequate education. If the voucher/choice legislation that has been proposed passes, the state legislature will take even more money away from our cash-strapped public schools and jeopardize the education system responsible for over 90 percent of our students.

Do you know what would make education choices easier for parents? Public schools that deliver more than a minimally-adequate education for every student.

Let’s try that first

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Funding, School Choice, South Carolina, Vouchers

Darcie Cimarusti: How Charters in New Jersey Double-Dipped into Federal CARES Funding

By dianeravitch
August 18, 2020 //
9

Darcie Cimarusti is a school board member in New Jersey and Communications Director of the Network for Public Education. Her telling of charter school greed in New Jersey reminded me of the song called “On That Great Come and Get It Day” from “Finian’s Rainbow.” No “Come and Get It Day” for public schools, onLy for politically connected charter schools. And for those who believe that charters play by the same rules as public schools, take a look at those salaries for charter principal. A sweet deal.

She writes here with meticulous documentation about how some charters in New Jersey took a generous portion of Paycheck Protection Program funds, whose ostensible purpose was to help small businesses survive the economic shutdown caused by the pandemic. The charters that grabbed big bucks were never in danger of losing their funding. Thirty years ago, the original goal of charter schools was to demonstrate that they could achieve better results at less cost and be more accountable. Their new goal seems to be to scoop up as much money as they can.

New Jersey’s charter schools walk a constant tightrope. Although publicly funded by state and local tax dollars reallocated from under-funded public school districts, charters are privately managed by appointed boards and are often less accountable to the public.

In recent years, there has been no more striking example of this tenuous balancing act than the charter sector’s “double dip” into Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act funding. The charter sector flexed their lobbying muscle and ensured charter schools were eligible both for 100% forgivable loans as nonprofit entities through the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and for grants as Local Education Agencies (LEA) through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund that also funded local public schools. PPP forgivable loans, which were meant to help struggling small businesses pay their employees, were slyly used by charter schools and their management organizations, even though the charters had maintained their dedicated funding stream of tax dollars.

Although the Trump Administration originally refused to reveal where and how the PPP funds were distributed, once the list of recipients was released, The Network for Public Education (NPE) began working to ascertain how much funding was given to charter schools and the management organizations that run them.

NPE compared ProPublica’s database, which provides loan amounts in ranges, with lists of charter schools provided by individual states and identified between $925 million and $2.2 billion in PPP loans to charters and CMOs.

As part of NPE’s investigation, I compared New Jersey’s list of charter schools with ProPublica’s database of loans and created a list of New Jersey charter schools and charter management organizations (CMOs) that received PPP forgivable loans.

The New Jersey Double Dippers

In total, between $25.6 and $61.8 million in PPP forgivable loans were awarded to New Jersey charter schools and their CMOS. Thirty-seven New Jersey charters schools received between $27.9 and $65.1 million, and four CMOs received an additional $2.65 to $6.7 million.

Charter schools also received an additional $10,084,128 in ESSER grant funds, with amounts as low as $4,410 to Ridge and Valley Charter School and as high as $1,229,935 to Mastery Schools of Camden, a group of Renaissance charter schools.

Many of New Jersey’s CMOs Took a Triple Dip Out of CARES Funding

Four Charter Management Organizations that run nine charter schools that took PPP forgivable loans, also accessed forgivable loans for themselves.

iLearn is a CMO that operates a chain of charter schools alleged to be affiliated with the Turkish Gulen movement. The CMO received a forgivable loan of between $350,000 and $1 million and the four New Jersey schools received PPP forgivable loans totalling $6 to $14 million. Only three charter schools in New Jersey received PPP forgivable loans worth $2 to $4 million, and two were iLearn schools. With the addition of just over $1.4 million in ESSER grants, the iLearn chain brought in between $7.4 and $15.4 million in federal subsidies – more than any other chain in the state. According to the most recently available 990s, iLearn had a healthy fund balance of $1.3 million and individual iLearn schools had fund balances as high as $1.3 million as well.

KIPP New Jersey, the CMO that oversees KIPP schools in Camden and Newark, received a $2 to $5 million forgivable loan – the largest of any CMO in the state. According to their 2017 form 990, the organization had an almost $12 million fund balance and CEO Ryan Hill earned a handsome $265,341 salary. KIPP Cooper Norcross also received a $2 to $5 million PPP forgivable loan, in addition to over $1 million in ESSER grant funds.

College Achieve Public Schools, a small CMO managing three locations, received $150,000 to $350,000 in forgivable loans. Additionally, the Asbury Park and Paterson charter school locations each received $350,000 to $1 million, and the Plainfield location received $1 to $2 million in forgivable loans. In total, College Achieve received $1.85 to $4.35 million in PPP forgivable loans, and the three schools banked another $751,735 in ESSER grant funds. College Achieve served less than 1,300 students in the 2017-18 school year, yet CEO Mike Piscal took home over $251,000 in compensation. Two other employees made over $200,000 as well, with one earning $265,397 and the other $230,998. An NJ Advance Media analysis of state data found that in 2017-18 the average superintendent salary was $155,631 and only 30 superintendents in the state earned over $200,000.

Philip’s Education Partners, a CMO that manages two charters – one in Newark and one in Paterson – received a $150,000 to $350,000 forgivable loan. The Paterson location got $350,000 to $1 million, and another $147,251 in ESSER grant funds. The Newark location didn’t receive PPP money, but did get $187,343 in ESSER grants. In total Philip’s Education Partners and its schools took in $500,000 to $1.35 million in PPP forgivable loans and another $334,594 in ESSER grants. The two schools served just over 500 students in the 2017-18 school year but CEO Miguel Brito made a staggering $410,205, over $100,000 more than any other school leader in the state.

Philip’s Academy Newark was the first private to charter school conversion in New Jersey and in many ways seems to continue to operate more like a private school than a public school. The former St. Phillips Academy, founded by an Episcopal church, was flush with $5 million in gifts and grants when it was awarded charter status. With the new-found steady stream of tax dollars, Brito said the cash on hand would “go into capital projects rather than operating expenses.” The CMO ended the 2017-18 fiscal year with over $21 million in net assets, and employed a “Chief Philanthropy Officer” earning a six-figure salary.

Charters Have a Dedicated Funding Stream, So Why Accept PPP Loans?

The examples above demonstrate that PPP forgivable loans went to CMOs and schools with healthy fund balances and enough cash on hand to pay exorbitant salaries.

Investigations in other states have uncovered recordings of board discussions related to the acceptance of PPP loans. For example, a Utah Military Academy charter school board member stated that the PPP money could supplant funds budgeted to pay salaries, and the already allocated dollars could “go into our accounts to help flush up our funds.”

One board member objected, stating that the money was meant for businesses struggling to keep their employees, and that the charter’s “funding wasn’t cut at all,” but her colleagues shot back “We’re a business,” and, “We’re a nonprofit.”

A review of New Jersey charter school minutes led to a frustrating discovery. New Jersey regulations state that charter schools must post board minutes on their websites to comply with the Open Public Meetings Act, yet only fourteen of the thirty-seven schools that received PPP loans had up-to-date minutes that were detailed enough to contain resolutions accepting the PPP loans. Many websites have no minutes at all, and the majority of the minutes that are accessible are, by and large, sparse on details. This leaves the public mostly in the dark regarding how and why most New Jersey charter schools decided to apply for and accept PPP loans.

Minutes of the May 20 meeting of the Achieve Community Charter School show that the board of trustees voted unanimously to accept a PPP loan, and the board resolution explained that the charter would “not be able to conduct its annual gala” which could lead to a reduction in staff.

A handful of other charter schools, all under contract with School Business Office LLC, a for-profit provider of school business management services that took its own $150,000 to $350,000 forgivable loan, passed virtually identical resolutions that cited a list of “examples of economic uncertainty” impacting K-12 districts as a whole, as the reason to accept the loans.

The resolutions also cited a possible “reduction in State Charter Aid.” As a result of COVID-19 Governor Murphy reduced state aid to schools by $335 million, which will likely result in a decrease in per-pupil charter funding next year. However, charter schools suffered no uncertainty or reduction in aid that school districts didn’t also suffer, and school districts weren’t eligible for PPP loans to fill their budget gaps.

Paterson superintendent Eileen Shafer has been clear that district students “get scraps” after state funds allotted to the district are redirected to charters. The perpetually beleaguered school district, facing a $16.4 million reduction in state funding due to the coronavirus pandemic, resorted to asking the public for donations to provide students with laptops to bridge the digital divide.

It seems the simplest answer as to why charter schools and their CMOs applied for and accepted PPP loans is that they could. The national charter lobby ensured that charters were eligible both as nonprofits and as LEAs, and many of New Jersey’s charter schools were willing to take the funds meant to save small businesses and nonprofits from the ravages of the COVID-19 economy.

Now that this information is public, charters and their CMOs should return PPP loans, so that the money can be redistributed to New Jersey’s small businesses that have truly been harmed by the pandemic. For those that don’t, the state should deduct the amount they received from any future relief provided to schools through the CARES Act.

Either charters are public schools or private entities – they can’t have it both ways.

Categories Charter Schools, Funding, New Jersey

Katherine Stewart: Betsy DeVos’s Plot to Transfer Public Funds to Private Schools During the Pandemic

By dianeravitch
August 16, 2020 //
24

Katherine Stewart, a scholar of rightwing evangelicals, writes in The New Republic about Betsy DeVos’s brazen transfer of public funds to private schools during the pandemic. Stewart is the author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism. Stewart surveys the generous distribution of federal funds to private and religious schools, far more generous than the federal money for public schools. As you have read in numerous posts and in a study by the Network for Public Education, charter schools, which enroll about 6% of American students collected $1 billion to $2 billion from the Paycheck Protection Program. Stewart shows that private and religious schools collected even more. This was no accident. It is part of DeVos’s long-term goal of destroying public education.

She writes:


How much more does the Trump administration value the children of elite private and religious schools than the children who attend public schools? We can answer the question with some hard numbers. Public school students merit something like $266 apiece in extra pandemic-related funding. Kids attending the right private schools are worth $5,000 each or possibly much more.

That $266, by the way, is an overestimate. It’s what you get when you take the $13.5 billion allocated for K-12 education in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act of this past March and divide it up among the nation’s 50.8 million public school students. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos made sure to siphon some of that money for private and religious schools, which she has long favored, although she did receive pushback: On July 22, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), joined by school districts in California, Connecticut, and Colorado, sued DeVos and her department over the policy, calling it “as immoral as it is illegal…”

The $5,000 per student figure for some private schools cited above comes out of the Paycheck Protection Program, which was established by the CARES Act and implemented by the Small Business Administration. Public schools aren’t eligible for PPP money, which is technically a loan but will be forgiven if the funds are used for expenses that meet certain criteria. Although the SBA does not disclose exact loan amounts, it does make public the recipients receiving more than $150,000 and identifies amounts within broad ranges.

With this information, we know that Buckingham Browne & Nichols School, a private pre-K–12 school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with a $75 million endowment and a student body of around 1,013, where annual tuition runs up to $52,300, collected a loan of between $5 and $10 million—or roughly $5,000 to $10,000 per student. (The school did not respond to multiple requests to confirm the exact amount.)…

Georgetown Preparatory School, which serves about 500 students on 93 acres in North Bethesda, Maryland, and whose notable alumni include Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, collected a $2.7 million PPP loan, which works out to $5,440 per student. According to an analysis by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the total amount of large PPP loans given to private and religious schools was at least $2.67 billion and as much as $6.47 billion—or about half as much as the total for all schools under the CARES Act, even though private and religious schools educate only 10 percent of the nation’s schoolchildren.

And these schools could potentially receive even more. DeVos stuffed a provision in the CARES Act for “equitable services” that may send another $1.35 billion, which might otherwise have gone to public schools, to private schools. She’s also giving them a cut of the $3 billion Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund…

The religious school beneficiaries remain free, as they always have been, of the anti-discrimination laws that apply to public schools. For example, Cathedral High School in Indiana took in a PPP loan of between $2 and $5 million ($1,700 to $4,200 per student), but it fired a teacher for having a same-sex spouse. The Foundation Academy in Winter Garden, Florida, whose 2016-17 handbook informs school families that the husband “has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family” while “a wife is to submit herself graciously” and which groups “homosexuality, lesbianism bisexuality” along with “bestiality” as grounds for expulsion, took in between $1 and $2 million in PPP money. Americans United estimates that at least 4,006 religious schools, or about 70 percent of private school recipients, received large PPP loans.

There is no indication, however, that the private schools receiving PPP money are under anything like the pressure the Trump administration is applying to public schools to fully reopen in the coming school year. When Fairfax County public schools offered parents a choice between in-person and remote learning, DeVos denounced the move in vehement terms. (The district has since announced that the 2020-21 school year will be fully remote.) But the Fairmont Preparatory Academy of Anaheim, California, which took in a minimum of $5 million, or $7,700 per student in PPP money, is offering families the same choice, so far with no criticism from the Department of Education…

Betsy DeVos did not take over the Department of Education in order to improve public education as we know it but to degrade it. She came to office with an ideology as simple as it is destructive: Government should get out of the business of education, she has consistently maintained. DeVos brought with her two powerful interest groups. On the one hand are the privatizers, on the other are the proselytizers, and both paws are reaching for the same pot of taxpayer money.

In a May radio interview, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Catholic archbishop of New York, asked DeVos whether she was trying to “utilize this particular crisis to ensure that justice is finally done.” “Yes, absolutely,” she replied. Alluding to her longstanding efforts to divert taxpayer money to sectarian schools, DeVos said, “For more than three decades that has been something that I’m passionate about.”

The public has consistently underestimated the extremity of the agenda against public schooling. Listen more carefully to what DeVos and her backers are actually saying. For decades, Christian nationalist leaders have denounced public schools as hotbeds of secularism. For just as long, reactionary economic ideologues have condemned them as breeding grounds for socialism. DeVos’s boss simply repeats the message at a louder volume: During his Fourth of July speech at Mount Rushmore, Donald Trump said public schools are teaching kids to “hate our country” with a “far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance.” They all understand at some level that a robust public school system is one of the pillars of a modern, progressive, pluralistic, and democratic society. That’s why they want to destroy it.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

What Trump’s Executive Orders Really Do

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2020 //
10

David Dayen writes the blog “Unsanitized” for the American Prospect. In this post, he explains what Trump’s executive orders really do. Please open the links to see the many embedded links.

After weeks of unproductive talks with Democrats bending but the White House unyielding, over the weekend Donald Trump issued three memoranda and an executive order that, at this moment, reflect the only additional relief to the American people at a time when fiscal policy was the only thing preventing the economy from ruin.

We’ll get to what’s in these in a minute, but it’s worth noting what’s not there. The Heroes Act, House Democrats’ kitchen sink policy, added up to $3.4 trillion. According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, who get the vapors at the sight of a deficit so they ought to know, the Trump orders would provide at best $225 billion in near-term funds, and on net, just $13 billion, tops, in new budgetary outlays. Everything in the orders either shuffles existing money around or kicks payments down the road; the new spending just assumes some missed collections.

I’ve read all four documents (here, here, here, and here) and I’d say CRFB is being amazingly generous assuming that anything close to even the meager funding it outlines will actually materialize. Let’s dive in.

Unemployment: the Trump action, if it actually worked, would give unemployed Americans an $400 extra per week retroactive to August 1, down from the $600 that expired in July. Of that sum, $300 would come from a FEMA disaster relief fund, and another $100 would have to be supplied by the states, using relief funds appropriated in the CARES Act. However most of that CARES Act money is already spoken for, and cash-strapped states don’t have a lot of extra money available to contribute. So I’d say it’s unlikely the state share will be included in a majority of states. Unemployed workers themselves will get half of what they previously got.

In addition, there’s only $44 billion available from the FEMA fund for the federal share. About $50 billion was spent on the $600 enhancement in the first two weeks of July, with nearly 30 million people receiving benefits. This is half that and maybe fewer recipients as hiring increases. But at most, this gets you another 5 weeks of support; by the end of August it’ll be done, even though it’s supposed to last until December.

When recipients will actually get anything is unclear; states would have to create an entirely new program through their antiquated unemployment insurance systems. It’s first-come first-served, so early states might get a little more for their residents while states that take months to figure things out could be shut out at the window entirely. And while the unemployed endure the wait, rent and other bills are still due.

Besides all that, it’s plainly unconstitutional, as David Super explains. The Disaster Relief Program being used isn’t intended for this purpose and its ability to deliver unemployment benefits is severely limited. Violating the Anti-Deficiency Act, which this does, carries criminal penalties. But while many will grumble, who exactly will sue to block the unemployed from getting even meager benefits? Treasury Secretary Mnuchin taunted Democrats with exactly this rationale on Sunday.

Payroll taxes: Set aside that people working need far less support than those who don’t. The president cannot change tax law to cancel taxes; he can defer payments. That’s what’s being done here. Any worker making less than $104,000 per year would have payroll taxes deferred from September 1 to the end of the year. They’ll still owe the taxes; they just won’t have to pay them until January.

This is a bureaucratic nightmare for employers, many of whom will likely opt to either keep paying them, or put them in an escrow account. Otherwise, they’d have to garnish a worker’s entire paycheck in January to cover back payroll taxes. My expectation is that this has next to no stimulative effect at all.

Trump says he wants to “terminate” these taxes if re-elected; he would need Congress to agree. It’s a political ploy to bribe the electorate, but if businesses just hang onto the money to avoid future fallout it won’t even work as a bribe. And Democrats are screaming that these taxes fund Social Security and Medicare and cancelling them would hasten a crisis (of course Congress could just, you know, fund Social Security and Medicare, and crisis solved.)

Evictions: This is just vaporware, the order just says that health officials should consider an eviction ban and that the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Treasury Department should see what they can do about helping renters and mortgage borrowers with funds to stay in their homes. That’s it. The federal moratorium only covered a handful of cases anyway; this is more useless than that.

Student loans: Of the four orders this is the most useful, as it extends an existing forbearance for federal student loans. Again, borrowers would still owe the money eventually, but it’s somewhat useful to be relieved of the burden now. What this shows is that the Education Department has a lot of discretion to let these loans go uncollected indefinitely, if they choose, to say nothing of the authority to cancel student loans. Trump is proving the concept.

It was a grave error to hold off on critical priorities until “the next bill,” after all the leverage was squandered. These Pelosi hagiographies are embarrassing in the context of her blowing the chance to secure ongoing relief throughout the pandemic. Whoever replaces Pelosi when she leaves doesn’t have to repeat these mistakes, as long as they learn from them.

I was on Democracy Now today talking about these orders as well as the war on the postal service, and you can watch that at their website.

Categories Funding, Hoax, Trump

Teacher: The Hidden Scandal in U.S. Education

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2020 //
44

A teacher in the District of Columbia wrote about the hidden scandal in public education: crumbling buildings.

She writes:

For all the debate about why schools should not open … the most obvious elephant in the room is invisible or just a footnote in most discussions. Yes… schools are crowded, yes… the government is not giving timely funding for the necessary PPE and such… and there are SO MANY reasons I could provide as to the dangers at this current time from early childhood issues to teen issues. But the glaring one involves a problem that has existed LONG before the pandemic, but would now be impossible “to fix” in order to make schools safe to open this fall.

US public school buildings are falling apart and have been for years. My school has a rampant mold problem. Two years ago we had a terrible rainy summer and came back to see that the mold was no longer hidden and just “peeking through, but rather was everywhere. I had a giant black clump of black mold on my ceiling in one spot where there is always moisture under normal circumstances. Mold was everywhere – hallways, classrooms, floors…. Was there mold abatement? No. They took ceiling tiles out, cleaned cursorily here and there for “cosmetic appeal”. They finally closed the school down over a weekend in mid fall and turned up all the heaters on high and opened windows and doors all weekend. The spores may have gone into dormancy – that is all. They would perk up as soon as pipe condensation started up when the AC came on in spring. At the end of the school year summer school was held at my school and the can was pushed further down the road for repairs and abatement.

That “road” never came. The custodian was told by his superiors to just replace ceiling tiles. I would regularly spray the obvious mold patch in my ceiling with hydrogen peroxide (bought on my own dime) knowing that this mold could not be healthy for little ones lungs!

Why bring all this up? Our school also has heat and AC issues… filters not fitting properly when replaced etc. My school is NO DIFFERENT than so many public schools in America. Even if the government did give over funding (even right away in March) it would take years to bring the buildings up to safety standards under normal conditions. All kinds of respiratory illnesses abound in my school and schools in other areas of the country too (have teacher friends in different places). This vulnerability would make our young as well as staff even more vulnerable in a very dangerous time.

So, do we send our students back to schools that make them vulnerable under ordinary circumstances? I have a feeling that S. Korea and schools in Europe are paying attention to school infrastructure so it really is a matter of organizing space, schedules to reduce numbers of students at any one time and adding PPE and cleaning.

NOT IN AMERICAN SCHOOLS… they are unsafe to begin with. This is the big elephant in the room.

Thank god my region made a smart decision and very early and set the tone for the entire metro DC/VA/MD area.

Categories Funding

Connecticut: Charters Struggled with Ethics of Double Dipping Federal PPP

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2020 //
5

This story in the Middletown (Connecticut) Press shows that charters in the state debated whether it was ethical to take federal money intended to help small businesses and nonprofits that might go bankrupt. Some took the money, others decided against it. The Connecticut Charter Schools Association encouraged the state’s charter schools to go for the money. Among those that did were members of large charter chains supported by billionaires.

Note the comments of Rep. Bobby Scott, chair of the House Education Committee (and a DFER favorite), who sees no dilemma, and of Connecticut’s Rep. Jahana Hayes, who acknowledges the ethical problem.

Journalist Emilie Munson writes:

As the coronavirus reshapes education, over half of Connecticut’s 22 charter schools received Paycheck Protection Program loans this spring and summer, collecting a total of at least $12.5 million to $16.5 million in federal support unavailable to traditional public schools, a review of Small Business Administration data and school board minutes shows.

The popular forgivable loans proved a source of division among charter school administrators, some of whom thought it was improper for the schools to apply for the money, while others said it was irresponsible not to….

Bruce Ravage, founder and executive director of Park City Prep in Bridgeport, applied for a PPP loan in July, after learning more about the program and realizing he would be “crazy” not to, he said. The school recently was approved for a loan of $441,000, he said.

“We’re a business that serves a very, very needy population of students and I want to be sure that I have the resources available to provide whatever it is going to take,” Ravage said. “There are corporations that have a lot more money than us that applied for this.”

Tim Dutton, director of Operations at the Bridge Academy in Bridgeport, said his school chose not to apply for a loan because it did not lose revenue or lay off employees during the pandemic, and they knew they would receive federal emergency funding.

“The decision on the Paycheck Protection Program was really just the ethical one. I didn’t think it was about bailing out schools,” Dutton said. “PPP would not be appropriate as it would look like ‘double dipping.’”

On May 13, the school board of Great Oaks Charter School in Bridgeport voted against applying for a PPP loan, believing the school was likely ineligible because it was still receiving a steady stream of state and federal funding, school board minutes show. Just over a month later, the school was approved for a PPP loan of $350,000 to $1 million, SBA data shows…

When asked about PPP loans for charter schools, House Education and Labor chairman Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., said his priority is simply securing funding for public schools, adding he does not want to “draw red lines all over the place.”
A member of the committee and former 2016 National Teacher of the Year, Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-5, said however she wants to “push for effective guardrails that prevent charter school waste, fraud and mismanagement.”
“Far too often, malicious actors in the charter school industry siphon much needed funds away from public education and from students in need,” Hayes said in a statement. “Public charter schools accessing both pots of relief funds amounts to double dipping and feeds into the skepticism and criticism that so many have surrounding charter schools. Applying for funds both as a school and a nonprofit drains resources from the public schools and communities that need it most, undermines student’s ability to learn, and threatens the very promise of equal education.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Connecticut, Education Industry, Ethics, Funding, Privatization
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