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Alexander and Blunt: Government Needs a “Shark Tank” Competition to Produce More Virus Tests

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2020 //
14

Lamar Alexander and Roy Blunt are senior Republican Senators who chair important committees. In this article, they propose a “shark tank” competition for government agencies, believing that the funding and the competition will ramp up the number of tests produced. They admit that the federal government has failed to supply the numbers of reliable tests needed by the American public to feel safe and ready to resume work.

Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) is chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) is chairman of the Senate’s health appropriations subcommittee.

As I read the article, I couldn’t help but think that the premise of the article is silly. The scientists at NIH and other federal agencies need more funding but they don’t need a “shark tank” to spur them on. The scientists know the gravity of the situation. They are doing the best they can with the resources they have. If they need more resources for staff and equipment, they should get it without the phony spur of a “race.”

They should be encouraged to collaborate, not to compete. Science works best when scientists share what they know worth their peers.

Alexander and Blunt rely on the same thinking that leads to “merit pay,” which has always failed. That thinking presumes that most professionals are slackers and won’t do their best without incentives. It was wrong for teachers and it’s wrong now for scientists.

Give them the resources needed to do their job and let them do it without hokey tricks or “shark tank” competition. They want to develop better tests; they want to find a cure. They don’t need a prize to motivate them.

Categories Competition, Education Reform, Funding, Health, Merit pay, Science

NYC: Success Academy Lays Off Employees, Fires Teachers

By dianeravitch
April 22, 2020 //
28

Alex Zimmerman of Chalkbeat reports that Success Academy is laying off employees and firing teachers. The layoffs, about 4% of “non-core” employees, were laid because of the financial crunch caused by the pandemic. The teachers were fired, the chain said, because of their performance.

SA has a board of billionaires and millionaires and is known for its lavish spending on test prep rallies (“Slam the Exam”) in expensive facilities like the Barkley Center in Brooklyn and its graduation ceremony at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It regularly holds plush dinners where hedge fund managers and other moguls announce multimillion-dollar gifts.

One network employee who was laid off and spoke on condition of anonymity said employees were not offered severance, though healthcare benefits would extend into the summer.

“Success Academy is an incredibly well-resourced organization,” the staffer said. “For them to offer no financial assistance for laid off employees in these economic conditions speaks to what the executive office values, which is certainly not its employees.”

Success officials did not immediately respond to a question about severance packages.

One former Success official said the staff cuts could foreshadow staffing shifts in the rest of the city’s charter school landscape.

“I think Success does do a really good job of seeing around the corner,” said the official who still works in the charter sector and spoke on condition of anonymity. “Are they reading the moment a little bit more in advance and some of the difficulties that are coming down the line for the whole sector?”

Success, for instance, was the city’s first big charter network to announce its move to remote learning, making the call two days before the de Blasio administration closed the city’s district schools. The organization has also launched a more regimented approach to remote learning, with caregivers asked to help monitor hours of daily instruction even among the network’s youngest students.

The move to reduce staff is likely to raise eyebrows, as the network has a reputation for spending lavishly on everything from advertising and rallies to executive compensation. Moskowitz earns roughly $890,000 a year, according to the organization’s most recent tax filing.

Categories Education Reform, Funding, Harlem Success Academy

Stephen Dyer: Charter Schools Admit They Are Not Public Schools

By dianeravitch
April 16, 2020 //
13

Stephen Dyer of Innovation Ohio points to the central hypocrisy of charters seeking Coronavirus Relief funds.

Public schools are not eligible to request these funds.

Thus, charter schools acknowledge that they are NOT public schools. They seek money reserved for small businesses.

The squalid aspect of this maneuver is that any money they get is taken away from a business that was forced to close, to lay off employees, and to operate without revenues. Charters suffered not at all. They never lost funding. They want to take money out of the mouths of those small business owners who suffered real harm.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Privatization

Seth Sandronsky Interviews Mercedes Schneider about the Virus and Standardized Tests

By dianeravitch
April 16, 2020 //
14

Veteran journalist Seth Sandronsky interviews Louisiana teacher and blogger a Mercedes Schneider about how the coronavirus affected state standardized testing.

Schneider makes a bold prediction that states will cut their budgets for testing due to the economic stress caused by the virus.

I hope she’s right. Up until now, state legislators have been willing to sacrifice the arts, recess, school nurses, class size, and almost everything else, while protecting the Sacred Tests.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Education Reform, Funding, Standardized Testing

What Public School Employees Need to Know about the CARES Law

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2020 //
9

Terri Michal is a member of the elected board of education in Birmingham, Alabama.

She writes:


I love public education employees. They are the most resourceful group of people you could ever meet. They have to be. These employees work in an atmosphere of politics and nepotism.

They suffer through Legislators and administrators that create policies for them even though many of these policy makers have never worked in a school a day in their lives. Because of this, school-based employees have had to learn to MacGyver their way through each and every day.

These employees do this because they know what’s at stake; The future of the 51 million students who attend our public schools as well as the future of our country that one day those students will run.

Recently being made aware of a new piece of federal legislation that could impact the lives of public education employees, I did a quick survey of all my friends that work in that sector. I found that a large portion of them are not aware of this new law.

You see, they are working hard trying to ensure that students are fed, that packets of school work are assembled, and that the digital divide, which this pandemic has now thrust into the spotlight, is addressed as best it can be.
They are busy trying to MacGyver their way through a pandemic that education policy does not address, yet they are still expected to somehow provide continuity in teaching and learning.

But at what cost? How much will our students actually benefit from these weeks of taped and spliced together hybrids of online and paper and pencil learning, and is that greater than the sacrifices our employees’ may ultimately make?

How much responsibility should school districts share in making sure the most vulnerable in our communities are fed? Under a pandemic and amidst shelter in place orders, at what point do schools step back and local governments and other agencies step up?

I think these are just a few of the questions that are being asked by those in position to educate public school employees about their rights under the new FFCRA, and they just don’t have the answers. So they are saying very little, fearful that what little societal infrastructure public education can provide during this pandemic will fall apart.

Lacking any universal definition of what public education is today and what its responsibilities truly are, public education employees are expected to be and do it all. With a smile on their faces. Because it’s “for the children”. The rest will be sorted out later.

Well, this pandemic has thrust this topic to the forefront. It’s time to sort it out. It’s time to recognize public school employees as employees, not martyrs or miracle workers, or folks with big hearts that are willing to sacrifice it all.

They are employees, and in the United States employees have rights.

In that vein, public education employees, you need to know what your rights are so that you can decide what is right for you and your families.

If you are being asked to work in a building and you feel that you cannot or should not be doing it, if you cannot work (telework included) due to childcare issues, if you or a family member are sick with COVID-19, or you take care of anyone that is in a high risk category, there are now some federal job protections for you.

The Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) contains several provisions that will provide meaningful assistance to school district employees. It took effect April 2, 2020, and will end on December 31, 2020.
The FFCRA provides two types of leave for employees impacted by COVID-19: Emergency Paid Sick Leave and Emergency Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) Leave.

First, let’s talk about the Emergency Paid Sick Leave.

It provides 10 days of paid sick leave to an employee who is unable to work or telework if:

1. The employee is subject to a federal, state or local quarantine or isolation order related to COVID -19;

2. The employee has been advised by a health care provider to self-quarantine due to concerns related to COVID-19;

3. The employee is experiencing symptoms and is seeking a medical diagnosis;

4. The employee is caring for someone described above;

5. The employee is caring for the employee’s child if the school or place of care for the child is closed, or if the childcare provider of the child is unavailable due to COVID-19 precautions.

6. The employee is experiencing any other substantially similar condition specified by the Secretary of Health and Human Services in consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury and the Secretary of Labor.

How much it pays:

If an employee is unable to work due to the conditions described in 1-3, the employee is entitled to their regular rate or the applicable minimum wage, whichever is higher, up to $511 per day over a 2-week period.

If an employee is unable to work due to the conditions described in 4 or 6, such as a lack of child care, the employee is entitled to pay at 2/3 their regular rate or 2/3 the applicable minimum wage, whichever is higher, up to $200 per day for 2 weeks.

If an employee is unable to work due to the conditions described in 5 the employee is entitled to pay at 2/3 their regular rate or 2/3 the applicable minimum wage, whichever is higher, up to $200 per day for 12 weeks.

If the employee is part-time, the employee is entitled to be paid for a number of hours equal to the number of hours that the employee works, on average, in a 2 week period.

All full-time and part-time school system employees are covered by the Emergency Paid Sick Leave and are eligible for the two weeks of emergency paid sick leave if they meet one of the six criteria listed above.

Now let’s discuss the Emergency FMLA Leave.

It allows an employee to take up to 12 weeks of leave if the employee is unable to work or telework due to a need for leave to take care of the employee’s child if the school or place of child care has been closed, or if the child care provider is unavailable due to a public health emergency.

How much it pays:

The first 10 days (2 weeks) of leave may be unpaid, except that an employee may choose to use the new emergency sick leave (as identified above) or any other accrued paid leave.

The remaining 10 weeks of FMLA leave provided by this law will be paid at 2/3rds of the employee’s regular rate, up to a maximum payment of $200 per day ($10,000 total).

Emergency FMLA applies to any full-time or part-time employee who have been on the payroll for 30 calendar days.

Another important fact for employees who lack childcare or are caring for an ill child:
Employees in those circumstances can combine both emergency leaves. Here how combining the two may work:

• Weeks 1-2 – Emergency Paid Sick Leave at 67% regular salary up to $200/day

• Weeks 3-12 – Emergency FMLA Leave at 67% regular salary up to $200/day

In the case of lack of childcare, an employee may choose to use accrued leave and emergency paid sick leave together in order to make 100% of his or her salary for that period of time up to two weeks.

Remember it is illegal for an employer to discharge, discipline, or otherwise discriminate against an employee taking leave.

If you feel you need to use one or both emergency leave options, please notify your organization for further guidance. If you are not a member of an organization contact your supervisor to obtain the proper paperwork.

I am not advocating for or against utilizing the FFCRA, but I will say this: IF these MacGyvered forms of distance learning do get shut down due to the fact that public school employees exercised their legal rights, parents don’t worry, we can make up any time in the classroom that may have been lost.

How?

The easiest and cheapest way to do this would be to end high stakes testing.

Think about it. Most school systems spend weeks after spring break doing test prep and high stakes testing. If schools are able to go back into session in August (which I PRAY is the case!) then they could use the first four weeks to make up what was lost and omit the high stakes testing at the end of the year. This is a slightly altered version of a suggestion made by Dr. Eric Mackey, Alabama’s State Superintendent.

Let’s not aid the destruction of public education by buying into the false narratives that these last few weeks of school are critical and must continue at all costs, that the sky is falling if we don’t get our children behind a digital device, and that our schools are solely responsible for the care and feeding of our students. Instead let’s recognize how out of focus our vision has become concerning our expectations of public education and public education employees, and let’s begin a discussion asking parents, communities, and community leaders what their responsibilities are when it comes to our children and youth.

Public Ed can come back from this better and stronger, but only if we take action to correct the inequities and misguided policies that this pandemic has thrust onto the National stage.

Finally, to our public school employees, please take this time to care for yourself and your families. We will need you more than ever once our school doors reopen.

Categories Funding, Health, Teachers

Dana Milbank: When You Drown Government in a Bathtub, People Die

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2020 //
39

Dana Milbank, opinion writer for the Washington Post, says that the a Republican right wing finally have the helpless federal government they have longed for, and people are dying because of the government’s incompetence. Is this a polite way of saying that the Tea Party libertarians have blood on their hands? Note: there are only two areas where these people are eager and willing to lavish public funds: the military and religious schools.

He writes:

I had been expecting this for 21 years.

“It’s not a matter of ‘if,’ but ‘when,’” the legendary epidemiologist D.A. Henderson told me in 1999 when we discussed the likelihood of a biological event causing mass destruction.

In 2001, I wrote about experts urging a “medical Manhattan Project” for new vaccines, antibiotics and antivirals…

I repeat these things not to pretend I was prescient but to show that the nation’s top scientists and public health experts were shouting these warnings from the rooftops — deafeningly, unanimously and consistently. In the years after the 2001 terrorist attacks, the Bush and Obama administrations seemed to be listening.

But then came the tea party, the anti-government conservatism that infected the Republican Party in 2010 and triumphed with President Trump’s election. Perhaps the best articulation of its ideology came from the anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, who once said: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

They got their wish. What you see today is your government, drowning — a government that couldn’t produce a rudimentary test for coronavirus, that couldn’t contain the pandemic as other countries have done, that couldn’t produce enough ventilators for the sick or even enough face masks and gowns for health-care workers.

Now it is time to drown this disastrous philosophy in the bathtub — and with it the poisonous attitude that the government is a harmful “beast” that must be “starved.” It is not an exaggeration to say that this ideology caused the current debacle with a deliberate strategy to sabotage government.

Overall, entitlement programs continued to grow, and the Pentagon’s many friends protected its budget. And Trump has abandoned responsible budgeting. But in one area, the tea party types, with their sequesters, debt-limit standoffs and other austerity schemes, did all too well. Between 2011 and 2018, nondefense discretionary spending fell by 12 percent — and, with it, the government’s already iffy ability to prevent and ameliorate public health emergencies unraveled.

John Auerbach, president of Trust for America’s Health, described for me the fallout: Over a dozen years, the Public Health Emergency Preparedness grants to state and local public health departments were cut by a third and the Hospital Preparedness Program cut in half, 60,000 jobs were lost at state and local public health departments, and similarly severe cuts were made to laboratories. A $15 billion grant program under the 2010 Affordable Care Act, the Prevention and Public Health Fund, was plundered for other purposes.

Now Americans are paying for this with their lives — and their livelihoods.

If the United States had more public health capacity it “absolutely” would have been on par with Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, which have far fewer cases, Auerbach said. South Korea has had four deaths per 1 million people, Singapore one death per million, and Taiwan 0.2 deaths per million. The United States: 39 per million — and rising fast.

To have mitigated the virus the way Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan did would have required spending about $4.5 billion a year on public health, Auerbach estimates. Instead we’re spending trillions to rescue the economy.
Democrats aren’t blameless in pandemic preparedness. And some Republicans tried to be responsible — but the starve-the-beast crowd wouldn’t hear of it.

After Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) voted for the 2009 stimulus bill because he secured $10 billion for the National Institutes of Health, he was essentially forced out of the GOP. Rising in the party were people such as Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio), whose far-right Republican Study Committee in 2011 proposed a plan, applauded by GOP leadership, to cut NIH funding by 40 percent.

In 2014, NIH chief Francis Collins said there likely would have been a vaccine for the Ebola outbreak if not for a 10 percent cut in NIH funding between 2010 and 2014 that included halving Ebola vaccine research. Republicans jeered.

In 2016, when President Barack Obama requested $1.9 billion to fight the Zika virus, Republicans in Congress sat on the request for seven months and then cut it nearly in half.

Since then, Trump has proposed cuts to the NIH and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention so severe even congressional Republicans rejected them. And last month they fed the “beast” a $2.2 trillion feast to fight the pandemic.

Now they know: When you drown the government in the bathtub, people die.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Funding, Health, Republicans

Outrage: Charters Pursue Federal Small Business Funds

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2020 //
7

Are charters public schools or are they businesses? The charter lobby wants a slice of the $2 trillion intended to save small businesses even though the charters have suffered no loss of funding during the pandemic.

Many businesses are nearly bankrupt. This money was meant for them, not charters and their lobbyists.

Please sign this petition to Congress.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Funding

Tennessee: Parents and Civil Rights Groups Sue to Block Vouchers

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2020 //
9

PLAINTIFFS ASK TENNESSEE COURT TO HALT UNCONSTITUTIONAL VOUCHER PROGRAM

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACTS:

Ashley Levett, SPLC, ashley.levett@splcenter.org / 334-296-0084
Sharon Krengel, ELC, skrengel@edlawcenter.org / 973-624-1815, x 24

Lindsay Kee, ACLU-TN, communications@aclu-tn.org / 615-320-7142
Christopher Wood, Robbins Geller, cwood@rgrdlaw.com / 615- 244-2203

TENNESSEE – Parents and community members in Shelby and Davidson Counties who are challenging the constitutionality of the Tennessee Education Savings Account (ESA) voucher law filed a motion Friday asking the Chancery Court for Davidson County to halt implementation of the program before the state begins diverting taxpayer funds to private schools.

The motion asks the court to stop implementation of the law — which applies only to students living in those counties — that would illegally siphon much-needed taxpayer funds away from their public schools.

Although Tennessee’s voucher program was originally slated to begin in the 2021-2022 school year, Governor Bill Lee’s administration has rushed to distribute private school vouchers in the fall of 2020, despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which caused hundreds of millions to be slashed from education funding in the emergency budget passed by the state legislature in March.

Shelby County Schools and Metro Nashville Public Schools were already underfunded before the COVID-19 pandemic. The current crisis will only increase the need for funding and resources in these schools.

“Schools throughout Tennessee have been chronically underfunded for years. Diverting money to pay for private school vouchers in Shelby County and Nashville is not going to solve this problem, and will only exacerbate the challenges these districts face to provide all students with a quality education,” said Chris Wood, partner at Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP, which has joined with the ACLU of Tennessee, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Education Law Center to represent the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Southern Poverty Law Center and Education Law Center collaborate on the national Public Funds Public Schools campaign.

The lawsuit challenging the ESA voucher program, McEwen v. Lee, was filed last month. It charges that the law violates several provisions of the state’s constitution and laws.

The temporary injunction motion filed Friday asserts that the voucher program violates the Tennessee Constitution’s “Home Rule” provision, which prohibits the General Assembly from passing laws that apply only to certain counties. In this case, the voucher program will be instituted only in Shelby and Davidson counties. Because the legislature failed to appropriate funding for the first year of the law’s implementation, yet paid over $1 million to a private company for its administration using funds from an unrelated program, the voucher law also violates constitutional and statutory requirements governing appropriation of public money.

# # #

The Southern Poverty Law Center, based in Alabama with offices in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Washington, D.C., is a nonprofit civil rights organization dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society. For more information, visit http://www.splcenter.org/.

Founded in 1973, Education Law Center is a national leader in advancing the rights of public school students to equal educational opportunity under state and federal law through litigation, policy, advocacy and research. For more information, visit http://www.edlawcenter.org/.

The ACLU of Tennessee, the state affiliate of the national American Civil Liberties Union, is a private, non-profit, non-partisan public interest organization dedicated to defending and advancing civil liberties and civil rights through advocacy, coalition-building, litigation, legislative lobbying, community mobilization and public education. For more information, visit http://www.aclu-tn.org/.

Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP is one of the world’s leading complex litigation firms representing plaintiffs in securities fraud, antitrust, corporate mergers and acquisitions, consumer and insurance fraud, multi-district litigation, and whistleblower protection cases. With 200 lawyers in 9 offices, Robbins Geller has obtained many of the largest securities, antitrust, and consumer class action recoveries in history, recovering tens of billions of dollars for victims of fraud and corporate wrongdoing. Robbins Geller attorneys are consistently recognized by courts, professional organizations and the media as leading lawyers in their fields of practice. Visit http://www.rgrdlaw.com/.

Categories Accountability, Civil Rights, Funding, Privatization, Tennessee, Vouchers

Wendy Lecker: What We Learned About Public Schools During the Pandemic

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2020 //
17

Civil rights attorney Wendy Lecker writes a regular column in the Stamford (CT) Advocate.

In this post, she points out that the pandemic has demonstrated how important public schools are in their communities.

As states closed public school systems, the nation at large saw the wide range of necessary services schools provide to students in addition to instruction. Public schools, serving 50 million students, also provide meals, health and social support essential to child welfare and development. School districts are now attempting to deliver instruction from a distance, but also to maintain the vital personal connection teachers and other staff provide, especially to their most vulnerable students. Teachers read bedtime stories online, tutor students from outside the students’ front doors and drive by students’ homes to check in. Counselors make themselves available through any electronic means possible.

That schools play a central role in the lives of children, families and communities should not be a revelation. In a country with a porous safety net, schools are often the only public community institution where children’s needs are served. Children must mitigate hunger, trauma and other life challenges in order to learn and thrive.

Question: Will legislatures remember and protect their public schools when the pandemic is over and give them the funding they need?

Categories Funding

Carol Burris: Charter Schools Ask for Federal Money Though They Suffered No Loss

By dianeravitch
April 4, 2020 //
22

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, expresses outrage because the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools has asked for federal rescue money for charter schools, although they have suffered no losses.

She writes:


Shame on the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools!

I have great sympathy for small businesses that are devastated by COVID-19. And I am glad that the Small Business Administration is giving those businesses low-interest loans to cushion the blow. It is shocking, therefore, that the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools is actively encouraging its members to take advantage of those taxpayer funds intended for small businesses, although their income has not been interrupted at all.

Read below what the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools included in its weekly newsletter:

“SBA Emergency Loans Now Available to Charter Schools

“The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) now has authority to offer emergency loans to both small businesses and nonprofits under its Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program in eligible areas. While SBA authorities are focused on small businesses, we worked with federal lawmakers to ensure that the loan funding for this crisis is offered to charter schools and other nonprofits to borrow up to $2 million for up to 30 years at 2.75 percent for nonprofits. These loans are designed to help businesses and nonprofits meet financial obligations and operating expenses that would not be of concern if the COVID disaster had not occurred.”

By the way, some of these loans will not need to be repaid.

Are charter schools following Executive Director Nina Rees’s (former employee of Dick Cheney) advice?

Yes, they are.

Read this story that just appeared in the Washington Post.

According to reporter Perry Stein, even though D.C. charter schools, like public schools, get most of their funding from the government, they can apply for funds under the CARES Act. Yet, public schools cannot.

”Charters claim they need the money because they have to give out laptops to their students. So do public schools. Charters claim they may lose donations. It is doubtful that the billionaires who give them money will stop. When crises occur, billionaires do just fine.

”Once again, the charter sector, through the lobbying efforts of Nina Rees of the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools, worked behind the scenes to gain fiscal advantage for the privately operated schools they claim are public schools.

”This time Rees did it during a crisis of enormous proportions–one that is devasting the small business community for which so many charter and public school parents work.”

Will the National Alliance, which is flush with cash, also apply for these funds? We will do our best to find out. Although our donations have decreased, the Network for Public Education will not apply for these funds. In fact, we are actively asking our members to donate to organizations that are providing crisis relief.

Charters claim to be public schools–except when being a “business” is to their advantage.

Charters claim to be “public schools” when that’s where the money is. But when the money is available for small businesses, they claim to be small businesses. Public schools aren’t eligible for the federal money. But charter schools are.

Public schools are not small businesses. Charters just defined themselves: Not public schools. Small businesses.

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