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Jan Resseger: Biden Campaign Promises Were Bold and Necessary

By dianeravitch
November 10, 2020 //
21

Jan Resseger reviews Biden’s campaign promises about education and expresses her admiration for them. They represent a sharp departure from the harsh, punitive approach of Race to the Top.

Most of those promises require a dramatic increase in funding to close the opportunity gap.

During the campaign, President Elect Biden proposed public schools policy designed to expand the opportunity to learn: “Invest in our schools to eliminate the funding gap between white and non-white districts, and rich and poor districts. There’s an estimated $23 billion annual funding gap between white and non-white school districts today, and gaps persist between high- and low-income districts as well.”

Educators and advocates will need to hold Joe Biden accountable for these promises even as we work to support his efforts to make them a reality.  A significant challenge for Biden will be passing the tax increase on corporations and the wealthiest Americans. Mitch McConnell will continue to lead a Republican majority Senate, whose members will likely not be amenable to raising these taxes.

So, one obstacle to implementing Biden’s bold promises is Mitch McConnell. Another is whether he chooses a Secretary of Education and key personnel who are still attached to the failed policies of Race to the Top. Will his new Secretary bring a bold new vision to support students, teachers, and schools instead of threatening them?

Categories Accountability, Biden, Education Reform, Funding

Texas: What I Said to Public Education Advocates

By dianeravitch
November 8, 2020 //
9

The Pastors for Texas Children, great friends of public schools, invited me to come to Texas in April 2020. I was going to speak in Houston, Dallas, and Austin to activists for public schools. The events were organized by Charles Foster Johnson, the remarkable, wise, and tireless leader of PTC. He has launched similar groups in other states, including Oklahoma and Tennessee.

Then came COVID and my trip was scratched and replaced with a Zoom meeting in late October. I had a spirited conversation with Evan Smith of the Texas Tribune, a superb interviewer who had read my book Slaying Goliath carefully and asked incisive questions. This is the recording of the Zoom. I come in about minute 15 and the conversation is about 40 minutes.

I prepared for the day by studying up on what’s happening in my native state. Texas right now is ground zero for the hungry charter industry. The state commissioner, Mike Marath, who is not an educator, is gung-ho for more charters.

The public schools, which enroll more than five million students, have been underfunded since at least 2011, when the legislature cut the schools’ budget by more than $5 billion. That funding was never fully restored even though enrollment increased. The majority of the state’s public school students and Hispanic and African American. The majority of the legislators are white men.

Meanwhile, the rightwingers have been pushing for charters and vouchers. The Pastors for Texas Children and other civic groups repeatedly stopped the voucher bill by building a coalition of urban Democrats and rural Republicans. For now, vouchers are dead.

So, the privatizers have thrown their firepower into expanding charters. Betsy DeVos gave the state more than $200 million to open new charters. Texas is overrun with corporate chains. The public schools of Texas outperform charters by test scores. Public school students are better prepared for college than charter students. Charter graduates have lower earnings after they finish their schooling. Why, I wondered, do wealthy Texans continue to fund failure?

I hope you will take the time to watch.

https://www.google.com/url?q=https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/yLu6AVRUbArHLjQJWlZCgWgtQLtdu-FHuXqfhH8XHhYNt06RIGqMm5CltHDjZf9O.QYiv1OwkVQ3q0wjb&source=gmail-imap&ust=1604875762000000&usg=AOvVaw3UFd1ui77ZVk5YKI1LypON

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Funding, Resistance, Texas, Vouchers

Arizona: Voters Approve Tax on Rich to Fund Public Schools

By dianeravitch
November 7, 2020 //
6

#Red4Ed is still producing results in Arizona!

Voters approved a measure to raise the taxes of the wealthiest by 3.5% for the benefit of public schools.

Proposition 208 passed with 52% of the vote. It will produce nearly $1 billion annually for public schools. Fifty percent will be used to raise teachers’ salaries.

The “YES” vote on Prop. 208 will impose a 3.5% income tax surcharge on taxable annual income over $250,000 for single persons or $500,000 for married persons filing jointly.

Categories Arizona, Education Reform, Funding, Teacher Pay, Teacher Shortage

Pastors for Texas Children on the Election Results

By dianeravitch
November 6, 2020 //
7

The Network for Public Education is allied with Pastors for Texas Children. PTC has been a courageous leader in the fight for our public schools and against privatization.

The leader of PTC wrote the following statement:

Statement from Reverend Charles Foster Johnson on the 2020 Elections
Pastors for Texas Children extends a hearty congratulations to all those elected and re-elected to serve our children in the 87th Texas Legislature! Both incumbents and challengers fought hard and often confrontational, contentious campaigns that produced untold stress on them and their families. This is the messy price we pay for open and free elections, and we honor all candidates for serving the public in this important and sacrificial way. We have held every candidate in our prayers, and will continue to do so. We note with profound gratification the emphasis on public education in this electoral cycle. Virtually every incumbent and challenger ran on a strong public education platform. It is clear that the people of Texas want their House of Representatives to be fully affirming of great public schools for all 5.4 million Texas children, promote policies that protect and provide for them, and oppose policies that harm them.  It is crystal clear what public education support means:

*Opposition to any voucher proposal, regardless of its name, that diverts funding away from our neighborhood public schools to underwrite private and home schools.

 Support for budget plans that adequately fund our children’s public education, for a comprehensive study that determines what that education actually costs in current dollars, and for new sources of state revenue to sustain HB3.  

Opposition to charter school expansion that drains money away from public schools.

Support for charter school transparency and accountability.

Opposition to burdensome standardized testing that teachers and parents clearly abhor.

Support for teacher authority and compensation.  

We will be working closely with all 150 House members and 31 Senate members to make sure these promises are put into action in the 87th Legislature. 

Universal education, provided and protected by the public, is an expression of God’s Common Good as well as a Texas constitutional mandate.  Our children are counting on us all to advocate for it.
Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Funding, Teachers and Teaching, Testing, Texas, Vouchers

Ohio: The Cost of “School Choice”

By dianeravitch
November 5, 2020 //
19

What is the state of Ohio paying for charters and vouchers? From state data and evaluations, we know that neither sector performs as well as the state’s public schools. The legislature likes to fund failure.

Bill Phillis, who retired as deputy state superintendent and is expert about school finance, has the answer:

Current Cost of School Choice

The cost of school choice borne by the state and school districts is enormous. Public school leaders and advocates should be alarmed.
Ohio has been private school-friendly beginning a half century ago. In HB 166, the state provides private schools with $139,995,470 for administrative cost reimbursement and $309,878,268 for auxiliary services, for a total of $449,873,738. One half billion!

Additional direct state subsidies for charter schools and vouchers in HB 166 for FY 21 and FY 22 include:   

           


Charter facilities                                                $40,000,000 
 Quality charter schools                                  $60,000,000               
Public charter schools                                     $14,000,000               
EdChoice expansion                                      $178,240,758              
Choice programs                                                $9,780,309                               Total                                                $302,021,067

Hence, the direct state appropriations for private schools, charters and vouchers in FY 21 and FY 22 total $751,894,805.

If the deductions from school districts in FY 22 are equal to the deductions in FY 21 for vouchers and charters, the total will be $2,352,881,306. Therefore, the grand total of tax dollars going to private schools and charters in FY 21 and FY 22 is $3,104,776,111.

Charter school deductions from school districts started with $10,784,924 in FY 99 and escalated each year to $929,884,915 in FY 15. Since FY 15, the total charter deduction has reduced slowly to $827,136,047 in the current school year. Vouchers started in 2008 with $42,355,792 in deductions and have escalated to $349,304,605 in the current year.

HB 166 is set to expand EdChoice vouchers exponentially. The legislature gave a one-year “freeze” in the expansion but the choice community will no doubt prevail in the expansion. 

The EdChoice litigation effort is designed to outlaw the EdChoice voucher scheme.
William L. Phillis | Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding | 614.228.6540 | ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net| www.ohiocoalition.org
Categories Charter Schools, Funding, Ohio, Vouchers

Texas Parent PAC: A Model of Action for Every State

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2020 //
6

Parents in Texas got disgusted 15 years ago when the Legislature almost passed a voucher law. They organized the Texas Parent PAC, which is a highly effective voice on behalf of public schools and more than five million students.

The website of Texas Parent PAC has a list of the endorsed candidates, both Democrats and Republicans.

Their guiding principles are a model for parents, grandparents, and civic activists in other states.

I recently heard from Dinah Miller, co-founder and co-chair, who explained the PAC’s origins. She wrote:

Texas Parent PAC formed in 2005 after taxpayer-funded private school vouchers failed to pass the Texas House by only one vote. Five PTA moms called a press conference during PTA Summer Seminar in Austin and announced we were forming a political action committee to elect better talent to the Texas House who would oppose vouchers and support public schools. We recruited Diane Patrick from Arlington who had local and state school board experience to run against hostile Texas House Public Education Committee Chair Kent Grusendorf who had been in office 20 years. We beat Grusendorf in the primary along with others and then knocked off another hostile education committee member in the general election. Those races put us on the map.

From our website: Texas Parent PAC is a bipartisan political action committee for parents, grandparents, parents-to-be, and anyone who supports high quality public education. The PAC has a track record of success, helping to elect over 63 current members of the Texas Legislature, and defeat 23 incumbents who were hostile to public education.

Endorsed candidates reflect traditional mainstream American values that honor and support children and their families, quality public education, strong communities, unlimited opportunities, and maximum citizen participation in our democracy. All endorsed candidates support the Texas Parent PAC Guiding Principles.

Fifteen years later, our volunteers are still fundraising for our endorsed bipartisan candidates for the November 3, 2020 election. Our website is www.txparentpac.com

Sincerely, Your Fan,

Dinah Miller

Co-chair and Co-founder

Texas Parent PAC

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Parent Groups, Resistance, Texas, Vouchers

New York City: Double-Dipping Charters Got 4x as Much Federal CARES $$ as Public Schools

By dianeravitch
October 30, 2020 //
5

Carol Burris and Greg LeRoy analyzed public data about federal CARES Act funding and discovered that nearly 60% of the city’s charter schools received Paycheck Protection Program funding, which was intended to help small businesses survive the pandemic, when so many teetered on the verge of bankruptcy. Someone slipped in an opening for nonprofit organizations, and charters cashed in, along with their management companies, even though they suffered no loss in funding.

Consequently, public schools received an average of $720 per student (which was almost nullified by Cuomo’s budget cuts), while the charters with PPP got four times as much federal money, and their management company also cashed in.

Burris and LeRoy write:

Yet despite that windfall in extra funding, 59% of New York City charter schools that directly received PPP funds have not yet given kids the opportunity to come back to school. And 60% of the schools controlled by PPP-endowed CMOs have not opened for in-person instruction either. It’s ironic that, in the sector that touts the virtues of school choice, so many charter schools are failing to provide that choice to the families they serve.

Here are some examples. Six New Visions Charter High Schools each received a forgivable PPP loan. Four of them received between one and two million dollars each, while two received between $350,000 and $1 million. Board minutes for New Visions charters acknowledge accepting PPP for four schools, including a reference to a discussion regarding the risk to “public relations” of keeping the money. Those minutes, however, reveal neither the exact amount each school received, the PPP dollars received by two additional New Visions schools, nor the $2 to $5 million that the New Visions charter management organization itself received.

Based on student enrollment figures combined with mid-range dollar amounts, those six schools received, on average, $3,139 per pupil in ESSER plus PPP monies, versus the $720 per pupil given to New York City public schools by the CARES Act — a pro-charter bias of more than four to one. And that does not include the funding given to the New Visions CMO.

Other big CMOs cashed in as well. KIPP New York, LLC and Uncommon charter schools each received between $2 and $5 million. Their schools are still closed for in-person instruction. Aside from schools run by CMOs, we estimate that the New York City charters that directly got PPP plus ESSER funds received, on average, over $3,500 per pupil in emergency federal funding. As these schools save money by teaching remotely, it is reasonable to ask where that double-dip extra money is going.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Funding, New York City

Jennifer Berkshire: Will Education Cause The GOP to Lose Arizona?

By dianeravitch
October 30, 2020 //
2

Jennifer Berkshire writes in this post about the educational awakening in Arizona, the result of #red4ed and the teachers’ revolt of 2018.

Proposition 208 is on the ballot. It calls for a 3.5% tax increase on people earning over $250,000 a year, to be used to raise teachers’ salaries and hire more teachers. Surprisingly, 60% of voters appear to favor the measure, including a sizable number of Republicans.

She writes:

That taxing the rich to pay for schools would emerge as a cause with bipartisan support in 2020 is not a complete surprise. More Arizonans now identify education, not immigration, as the top priority facing the state, reflecting mounting concern with schools that are notoriously underfunded, teachers who are poorly paid, and a teacher shortage crisis so severe that 28 percent of the state’s classrooms lack a permanent teacher.

Education has become a potent political issue since #RedforEd protests shone a harsh light on the condition of Arizona’s schools in 2018. After a historic teacher strike, educators doubled down on electoral organizing. Democrats gained four seats in the state House of Representatives that year. Now they’re poised to tip the House and possibly the Senate in their favor. If they succeed, voter dissatisfaction with the GOP’s embrace of controversial policies aimed at dismantling, defunding, and privatizing education will be a major reason.

A similar pattern is playing out in other key battleground states, including Michigan and Texas. In these states and others, the gulf between voters who believe in taxpayer-funded public education and GOP candidates who are hostile to it has created an opening for Democrats.

For decades, Arizona has been a petri dish for free market education experiments. Charter schools, publicly funded private schools, education savings accounts that allow parents to spend taxpayer funds on a dizzying array of education “options” with little state oversight or accountability—the Grand Canyon State has them all...

As school choice offerings in the state have ballooned, they have increasingly competed for funding with traditional public schools. “It all comes out of the same funding bucket, and the bucket wasn’t that big to begin with,” said Sharon Kirsch, research director for the grassroots public education advocacy group Save Our Schools Arizona...

That hands-off, regulation-free vision is precisely what an array of deep-pocketed interest groups in Arizona are pushing. Organizations like the Americans for Prosperity, funded by Charles Koch and the American Federation for Children, founded by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, are a major presence in the state. More recent arrivals to the school choice lobbying space include Yes Every Kid, which is another Koch project, and Love Your School, an offshoot of the right-wing Center for Arizona Policy.

Said Kirsch: “I’m not sure most people have any idea that these groups are essentially running education policy in Arizona...”

Berkshire points out that teachers are running for office, and their prospects look good. Arizona may be about to throw off the shackles of one-party rule that has crippled the state’s public schools and turned it into a free-market for privatizers, religious zealots, rightwing nuts, libertarians, and profiteers.

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Reform, Funding, Parents, Privatization, Resistance, Teachers

Danny Feingold: Why Californians Should Approve Three Ballot Propositions

By dianeravitch
October 28, 2020 //
1

Danny Feingold, publisher of Capitol & Main, explains why voters in California should right civil wrongs by voting for Proposition 15, 16, and 21.

He writes:

Proposition 15 would make amends for one of the most far-reaching ballot measures in American history — 1978’s era-defining Prop. 13. With its landslide passage, Prop. 13 not only upended California’s revenue stream for public education, it ushered in a taxpayer revolt that spread to cities and states across the country. In the rush to lower property taxes, California crippled one of the best K–12 public education systems in the nation while also starving local government of the funds needed for a host of essential programs.


How many libraries in poor communities closed for lack of funds, eliminating a critical refuge for both children and adults? How many programs had to turn away those in need, day after day, year after year, while frozen-in-place commercial property taxes padded the coffers of mega-land owners.

Like Prop. 15, Prop. 16 — which seeks to overturn California’s ban on considering race, sex or ethnicity in public employment, contracting and education — is politics as redemption. It speaks to our current reckoning with the persistence of racism, and our willful delusion that systemic discrimination is a thing of the past.

California’s passage of Prop. 209, in 1996, outlawed the use of affirmative action by state government, effectively pulling the rug out from under a generation of people of color. The passage by voters of Prop. 209 was undergirded by a patently false narrative: that affirmative action was no longer needed to combat racial bias, and furthermore, that it amounted to reverse discrimination. 

The lie that buttressed Prop. 209 was quickly revealed: Black enrollment at state universities plummeted, while women- and minority-owned businesses lost hundreds of millions of dollars in potential contracts. In the nearly 25 years since the measure was enacted, economic inequality in California has steadily risen, with disproportionate impacts on populations that were targeted by Prop. 209. In our rush to pretend that entrenched racism had been eliminated, more damage was inflicted on people of color, with impacts that are impossible to fully calculate.


Read more here: https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/california-forum/article246651463.html#storylink=cpy

Categories California, Education Reform, Funding

Ohio: The Staggering Cost of Privatization of Public Money

By dianeravitch
October 24, 2020 //
16

Bill Phillis, founder of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Advocacy, is a retired state superintendent in the state. He has focused like a laser on the importance of funding public education equitably and adequately. He writes here about the staggering cost of privatizing public money to pay for charters, virtual charters, and vouchers. This is money deducted from the public schools, which outperform both charters and vouchers and the failing virtual charter industry.

He writes:




The direct state subsidies to private schools and school choice programs will cost taxpayers $751,894,805 in FY 21 and FY 22; additionally, $2,352, 881,306 will be deducted from school districts for vouchers and charters




The total direct state budget appropriations in HB 166 for private school subsidies, charter and voucher programs in FY 21 and FY 22 are $751,894,805. $344,027,972 of the appropriations is in the General Revenue section of the budget and the rest is in non-General Revenue sections. This $751,894,805 is in addition to $2,352,881,306 that will be deducted from school districts, assuming that about the same amount is deducted in FY 22 as in FY 21.


Therefore the grand total of taxpayer revenue for private schools and school choice programs in FY 21 and FY 22 will be $3,104,776,111. The cost of transportation that is incurred by school districts for school choice programs is in addition.


The FY 21 and FY 22 direct state appropriation line items in HB 166 for private school subsidies, and voucher and charter school programs are listed here.


**flows through districts from a direct state subsidy
The direct state subsidies to private schools and school choice programs will cost taxpayers $751,894,805 in FY 21 and FY 22; additionally, $2,352, 881,306 will be deducted from school districts for vouchers and charters

The total direct state budget appropriations in HB 166 for private school subsidies, charter and voucher programs in FY 21 and FY 22 are $751,894,805. $344,027,972 of the appropriations is in the General Revenue section of the budget and the rest is in non-General Revenue sections. This $751,894,805 is in addition to $2,352,881,306 that will be deducted from school districts, assuming that about the same amount is deducted in FY 22 as in FY 21.

Therefore the grand total of taxpayer revenue for private schools and school choice programs in FY 21 and FY 22 will be $3,104,776,111. The cost of transportation that is incurred by school districts for school choice programs is in addition.

The FY 21 and FY 22 direct state appropriation line items in HB 166 for private school subsidies, and voucher and charter school programs are listed here.

**flows through districts from a direct state subsidy
Categories Charter Schools, Funding, Ohio, School Choice, Vouchers
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