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This Is a Book You Should Read: Noliwe Rooks’ “Cutting School”

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2019 //
20

I just finished reading Noliwe Rooks’ superb book, Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education (The New Press). Please buy a copy and read it. It is a powerful analysis of racism, segregation, poverty, the history of Black education (and miseducation), and their relationship to the current movement to privatize public education. She dissects the profitable business of segregation.

You will learn how cleverly the captains of finance and industry have managed to ignore the root causes of inequality of educational opportunity while profiting from the dire straits of poor children of color. In fact, as she shows, financiers and philanthropists have used and misused Black children throughout our history, for their own benefit and glory, not the children’s.

The book is both highly contemporary and at the same time, probably the best history of Black education that I have read. Rooks understands that the fight for equality runs through the schoolhouse door, and she documents how white elites have managed to block access, narrow access, or literally steal from Black families trying to gain access to high-quality education. She knows that charter schools and vouchers are a sorry substitute for real solutions. She understands that the rise of the profit-driven education industry has benefited the profiteers far more than the Black children they claim to be “saving.” “Saving poor kids from failing schools” turns out to be a lucrative business, though not for the kids.

Rooks invents a new term to describe the current “reform” movement: Segrenomics. In her telling, a sizable number of entrepreneurs and foundations, and organizations like Teach for America, have enriched themselves while advertising their passion for equity. Segregation and poverty have given them a purpose, multiple enterprises, career paths, and profit.

My copy of the book is covered with underlinings, stars, asterisks, and other notations, as is my way when I become enthusiastic while reading.

She bluntly states, “The road necessarily traveled to achieve freedom and equality in the United States leads directly through public education…Schools that educate the wealthy have generally had decent buildings, money for materials, a coherent curriculum, and well-trained teachers. Schools that educate poorer students and those of color too often have decrepit buildings, no funds for quality instructional materials, and little input in structure or purpose of the curriculum, and they make do with the best teachers they can find.” Differences based on class and color have been a constant in American history, and they remain so today.

She notes the rise of the for-profit industry in education, now associated with charter schools, cybercharters, and other forms of school choice. The new for-profit arrangement, which she calls “segrenomics, is “the business of profiting specifically from high levels of racial and economic segregation…The desire that some have to profit from racial and economic segregation in education, coupled with the active desire members of segregated communities of color have for quality education, has led to our current moment where quality education is for some a distant mirage, and the promise to provide it is profitable for others.”

Rooks was director of the African American studies program at Princeton University for a decade and is now director of graduate Africana studies at Cornell University. She interacted frequently with idealistic elite white college students who could not understand her skepticism about the “reform movement.”

Rooks describes the past thirty years as an era when “government, philanthropy, business, and financial sectors have heavily invested in efforts to privatize certain segments of public education; stock schools with inexperienced, less highly paid teachers whose hiring often provides companies with a ‘finders’ fee’; outsource the running of schools to management organizations; and propose virtual schools as a literal replacement for—not just a supplement to-the brick and mortar education experience. The attraction, of course, is the large pot of education dollars that’s been increasingly available to private corporate financial interests…Charter schools, charter management organizations, vouchers, virtual schools, and an alternatively certified, non-unionized teaching force represent the bulk of the contemporary solutions offered as cures for what ails communities that are upward of 80 percent Black or Latino.” Such policies are never prescribed for affluent white communities, she notes.

She suggests that those who seek to profit from racial and economic segregation should be penalized. Without a real and meaningful penalty, the profit-seekers will continue business as usual.

The fundamental argument of her book is that public education for Native American, Black, Latino, and poor youth is being purposefully unraveled, while wealthy elites are plundering the money that should have been spent on their education.

Rooks recounts the history of Teach for America, which had its beginnings at Princeton University. Wendy Kopp had an idea, visited corporate chieftains, raised money, created a powerful board of directors, and started an enterprise that became fabulously wealthy. Rooks observes that she didn’t spend time talking to the students or parents or the communities that she planned to save. TFA created a career path for idealistic and ambitious elite college graduates, who wanted to try their hand at teaching without committing to it as a professional obligation. TFA offered more benefits to those who joined it, she writes, than to those it claimed it wanted to “save.” It provided a resume builder and an entrée into powerful financial and political networks.

She analyzes a number of well-known “reform” organizations, not only TFA, but Democrats for Educational Reform and Students for Educational Reform. The latter was also founded at Princeton, by students who realized that their venture was so lucrative, so swaddled in grants from foundations, that they dropped out of college to tend to the millions heaped upon them. Helping poor children, it turned out, was indeed a rewarding business. She sees TFA, DFER, and SFER through the lens of segrenomics, business ventures that depended on “saving” poor children without disrupting the institutional and systemic roots of poverty and racism that engulf the world in which they live. She calls out “reformers” for their insistence that they could safely ignore segregation or poverty, because their aspirations alone would be enough to “fix” the lives of poor children.

Her richly documented history of Black education in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is fascinating. In the nineteenth century, most Blacks lived in the South, and the whites who controlled the segregated South did as little as they could get away with to educate Black children. Some opposed doing so, while others thought that Blacks should be equipped with no more than basic literacy and vocational training so that they could contribute to the economy, albeit as manual workers. In the main, the Northern philanthropists adjusted their ideals to the white Southerners’ low esteem for people of color. The philanthropists contributed money to build schools for Black children, but required impoverished Black communities to raise matching funds if they wanted a school. Given the desperate poverty of those communities, raising the matching funds required enormous sacrifice. In one of the most moving passages in the book, she describes a 1925 meeting in a small rural town in Alabama, where a Black representative of the Rockefellers’ General Education Board met with the sharecroppers to discuss raising money to build a school. The representative wrote to his supervisors that “’one old man, who had seen slavery days, with all of his life’s earnings in an old greasy sack, slowly drew it from his pocket, and emptied it on the table.’ He then turned to address the crowd and said, ‘I want to see the children of my grandchildren have a chance, and so I am giving my all.’ What he had to offer was $10. The sum total he had been able to save throughout the totality of his life.’” The assembled crowd raised $1,300 that night and eventually contributed $6,500 to match the gift of the Rockefellers.

As I read this, I felt a mix of emotions. Tremendous sadness but also rage at the Rockefellers, who could have just opened their wallets and given the community the school they so desperately wanted and needed without demanding such sacrifice. The foundation officer who read this account from Alabama must have had a heart of stone. The same stories about penurious philanthropists were repeated across the South, where local white officials typically diverted (stole) money meant for Black education and reapportioned it to white schools.

I have read other histories of Black education, but none that so deftly tied together the past and the present. The term “segrenomics” aptly captures the financiers’ fascination with “helping” black children but avoiding any change in the social policies that might lift their families out of poverty and promote genuine integration. The fact that philanthropists today eagerly underwrite segregated charter schools and insist that TFA  or merit pay or standardized tests can cure poverty represents continuity with their nineteenth century counterparts.

Rooks brings valuable historical, sociological, and philosophical insight into contemporary debates. Her analysis echoes the argument made by Anand Giriharadas in his bookWinners Take All: when the wealthiest elites claim that they are “saving” the world, beware. They are actually protecting the status quo and their own dominant position in society.

You will enjoy watching this YouTube video in which Professor Rooks explains her views about education reform, elite white students, and the lingo of reform. 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, Education Reform, History, Hoax, Poverty, Privatization, Race, Racism, Teach for America, Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers

How Charter Operators Exploit Legal Loopholes to Rake in Profits

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2019 //
7

 

This is an important article by three scholars. Derek Black of the University of South Carolina, Bruce Baker of Rutgers University, and Preston Green of the University of Connecticut. Please open the link to read it all.

 

https://theconversation.com/charter-schools-exploit-lucrative-loophole-that-would-be-easy-to-close-111792

 

While critics charge that charter schools are siphoning money away from public schools, a more fundamental issue frequently flies under the radar: the questionable business practices that allow people who own and run charter schools to make large profits.

Charter school supporters are reluctant to acknowledge, much less stop, these practices.

Given that charter schools are growing rapidly – from 1 million students in 2006 to more than 3.1 million students attending approximately 7,000 charter schools now – shining a light on these practices can’t come too soon. The first challenge, however, is simply understanding the complex space in which charters operate – somewhere between public and private.

Unregulated competition

Charters were founded on the theory that market forces and competition would benefit public education. But policy reports and local government studies increasingly reveal that the charter school industry is engaging in the type of business practices that have led to the downfall of other huge industries and companies.

Charter schools regularly sign contracts with little oversight, shuffle money between subsidiaries and cut corners that would never fly in the real world of business or traditional public schools – at least not if the business wanted to stay out of bankruptcy and school officials out of jail. The problem has gotten so bad that a nationwide assessment by the U.S. Department of Education warned in a 2016 audit report that the charter school operations pose a serious “risk of waste, fraud and abuse” and lack “accountability.”

Self-dealing

The biggest problem in charter school operations involves facility leases and land purchases. Like any other business, charters need to pay for space. But unlike other businesses, charters too often pay unreasonably high rates – rates that no one else in the community would pay.

One of the latest examples can be found in a January 2019 report from the Ohio auditor-general, which revealed that in 2016 a Cincinnati charter school paid $867,000 to lease its facilities. This was far more than the going rate for comparable facilities in the area. The year before, a Cleveland charter was paying half a million above market rate, according to the same report.

Why would a charter school do this? Most states require charter schools to be nonprofit. To make money, some of them have simply entered into contracts with separate for-profit companies that they also own. These companies do make money off students.

In other words, some “nonprofit” charter schools take public money and pay their owners with it. When this happens, it creates an enormous incentive to overpay for facilities and supplies and underpay for things like teachers and student services.

Millions of public dollars at stake

The Cincinnati and Cleveland charters are prime examples of this perverse incentive structure. In both cases, the Ohio report showed, the charters were leasing property from the subsidiaries of the charter school operators.

In fact, these and other similar subsidiaries were leasing facilities to several other charters in the state. These charters spent twice as much on rent as others in the state.

Thomas Kelley, a law professor specializing in nonprofit law, unearthed similar problems in North Carolina, where charter school management companies obtain “ownership of valuable properties using public funds” and then charge the nonprofit charter schools rent far in excess of what is necessary to cover the cost of acquiring and maintaining the facilities. Because of the self-dealing, he questioned whether the charters actually qualify for nonprofit status under federal law.

The windfalls from these self-dealing practices can be sizable. In Arizona, Glenn Way, a former state legislator, has made about $37 million selling and leasing real estate to a chain of charter schools that he founded and, until recently, directed as chairman of the board, according to local reporting.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Hoax, Privatization

Elizabeth Kolbert: The New Age of Philanthropy and the Crisis of Democracy

By dianeravitch
February 19, 2019 //
14

On this site, we have often complained about the philanthropists who impose their bad ideas on schools, which this far have consistently failed.

This article in The New Yorker reviews the new world of philanthropy, where the rich pay as little as possible in taxes and use their foundations to reorder the world as they think it should be. When they give, they end up in control, undermining democratic institutions and as rich as ever.

I strongly recommend a book titled “The Spirit Level,” which demonstrates that the most equal societies are the happiest societies.

On this subject, I recommend a book discussed in this article, Anand Giridharadas’ Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World.

Categories Billionaires, Education Reform, Hoax, Philanthropy

Nancy Bailey: Beware the SEL (Social-Emotional Learning) Hoax

By dianeravitch
January 26, 2019 //
30

Nancy Bailey sees another Reformer trick rapidly overtaking teachers and schools: Social emotional learning, like this is a new idea or something that never occurred to teachers.

She writes:

Social-emotional learning (SEL) in schools makes many parents and teachers nervous. We worry there’s an ulterior motive to collect behavioral data on how children think and act, and that the ultimate goal is to privatize public schools and track students.

Talk about transforming our public schools away from cognitive learning to SEL is everywhere!

Those promoting this kind of push for self-regulation of students and massive character data collection claim that teachers have methodically taught students without caring about their feelings.

This is an insult, especially since the test-and-punish era that hurt students, came from the same outside corporate reformers who mean to privatize public schools and who are now promoting social-emotional learning!

It’s the roadblocks that have been put in a teacher’s way by corporate outsiders that have made teaching regimented and cold. High-stakes testing, and increasingly difficult standards, rigor, even for kindergarteners, were created to shut down public schools. This never came from teachers!

The last straw occurred when she saw that David Brooks was writing about “social-emotional learning,” and she knew that SEL has become an empty phrase.

Bailey says that if you want to see true teacher love for students, think about the thousands of teachers in Los Angeles, picketing in the rain so their students would have better education.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Hoax

Connecticut: Will Legislators Follow the Money or the Voters?

By dianeravitch
January 23, 2019 //
6

Wendy Lecker, veteran civil rights lawyer, reviews the recent report by Common Cause-Connecticut about the intrusion of Charter money and lobbyists into the state.

Former Governor Dannel Malloy depended on charter money and gave them a state commissioner and seats on the state school board,as well as generous funding.

After repeated losses in other states, like Massachusetts, the charter lobby now is doubling down in Connecticut.

After their spectacular public losses, the charter lobby is getting craftier. A recent report by Common Cause and the Connecticut Citizens Action Group reveal some of their newer tactics, but with many of the same backers.

The report, “Who is Buying Our Education System? Charter School Super PACs in Connecticut” continues the work previously done by blogger Jonathan Pelto tracking the influence of charter money. It details the donations and spending of charter Super PACs in Connecticut’s recent elections.
Super PACs enable individuals and organizations to spend unlimited amounts of money in elections, as long as they do not coordinate this spending with candidates.

The report found that since 2016, six Super PACS spent more than half a million dollars in Connecticut elections. These Super PACS are founded and/or dominated by charter lobbyists and employees of charter organizations, such as the Northeast Charter Schools Network, the now-defunct Families for Excellent Schools, ConnCAN, Achievement First charter chain and DFER. Soon-to-be former Gov. Dan Malloy recently joined DFER’s board.

The majority of the money donated came from outside Connecticut and from a limited number of large donors, the largest being Walmart’s Alice Walton.

Perhaps because of their very public defeats by grassroots organizing in other states, the charter lobby became more stealth-like. The report notes that these Super PACS conceal their aims by adopting innocuous sounding names, such as Build CT, Leaders for a Stronger CT, and Change Course CT. They spent money primarily on advertising and canvassing.

One PAC, Build CT, focused on candidates in safe or unopposed races, including: Stamford’s Pat “Billie” Miller and Caroline Simmons, and Senate Majority leader, Norwalk’s Bob Duff. The authors suggest this strategy is designed to curry favor with those who will definitely be in power. Last session, Duff unsuccessfully pushed a charter-friendly school funding scheme where local districts would have to pay for charter schools over which they have no say.

The charter lobby always uses deceptive, “caring” names to hide its true purposes:

1. Privatize public schools
2. Destroy the teaching profession
3. Eliminate unions.

Connecticut Voters: Beware!

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Connecticut, Education Reform, Hoax

New York: NYSAPE Protests Legislative Effort to Lock in Test-Based Teacher Evaluation

By dianeravitch
January 21, 2019 //
12

The New York legislature pretended to kill VAM by passing legislation that shifts responsibility for teacher evaluation from the state to local districts. But the new law is old wine in a new bottle. It still requires that 50% of teachers’ evaluation must be based on test scores. This practice was denounced by a judge in New York, who called it “arbitrary and capricious.” This practice was rebuked by the American Statistical Association, which said it was invalid for individual teachers. This practice has been enjoined by judges in Houston and New Mexico.

New York State Allies for Public Education, the group that has led the wildly successful opt-out movement, issued the following statement today.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 21, 2019
More information contact:
Lisa Rudley (917) 414-9190; nys.allies@gmail.com
Jeanette Deutermann (516) 902-9228; nys.allies@gmail.com
NYS Allies for Public Education – NYSAPE

NYSAPE Urges Legislators to Vote NO to APPR Bill that Will Permanently Link High-Stakes Testing to Teacher and Principal Evaluations

This week, the NYS Assembly and Senate are expected to pass a teacher/principal evaluation bill that will amend the way NYS evaluates teachers and principals. Parents and educators who have taken a stand against the damaging effects of high-stakes testing vehemently oppose this legislation. Rather than the minor tweaks proposed in this legislation, we demand an immediate end to the mandated use of student test scores and student performance measures in the evaluation of educators and the closure of schools. Parents and Educators implore lawmakers to slow down and do further research. Please Take Action and write to your legislators in Albany to stop this speeding train!

Contrary to the claims of some supporters of the legislation, a close examination of the bills indicates that they continue to link teacher evaluations to student growth as measured by test scores and give the state education commissioner the power to shut down or take over schools based on state test results.

Reports of “decoupling” test scores from teacher evaluations are misleading and do not tell the whole truth. The proposed legislation does nothing to dismantle the current test-and-punish system. Under the proposed legislation, a district is no longer mandated to use the flawed grades 3-8 state assessments for evaluative purposes. However, districts must still use some type of test to evaluate teachers and principals.

How would this legislation work? School districts would still be required to administer all state assessments, but would have a choice between using the grades 3-8 state assessments for teacher evaluation or a different test altogether. If a district chooses not to use the grades 3-8 state assessments, the district must then select a separate assessment (often in addition to state exams) to be used in their evaluation plan. In addition to doubling down on high-stakes testing, the proposed legislation will logically lead to even MORE testing for students.

Despite the American Statistical Association and the National Science Foundation’s conclusion that evaluating teachers based on their students’ test scores produces statistically invalid results and does not improve learning outcomes, these bills ensure that 50% of teacher and principal evaluations will continue to be based on student assessments. This is hardly a victory. (For more on the 50% issue, see this article.)
​
Bianca Tanis, special education teacher and public school parent said, “I am disappointed by the misinformation campaign surrounding these bills. They perpetuate the same junk science that forces educators to teach to a test. At the end of the day, there is nothing about this legislation that is pedagogically sound.”

“Many professional organizations representing educators and stakeholders have expressed serious misgivings. The legislators must take the time to do further research and make an informed decision,” said Lisa Rudley, Westchester County public school parent, Ossining School Board member, and founding member of NYSAPE.

“We understand that some support of this legislation focuses on local control and the ability of school districts and local unions to choose their own tests for evaluation plans through collective bargaining. However, these bills put the burden of evaluating a teacher squarely on the backs of children through test performance. An evaluation system that pressures children and ignores research is reckless and morally flawed,” said Jeanette Deutermann, leader of Long Island Opt Out.

“The receivership component of the law means schools can be closed because a handful of students perform poorly on state tests. The stakes attached to these exams have never been higher. In no way does it help teachers become better at their jobs or schools to improve. This legislation does not even come close to decoupling high-stakes testing from the ways we evaluate our teachers and schools,” said Kemala Karmen, co-founder of NYC Opt Out.

Education historian Diane Ravitch points out, “The current teacher evaluation law (APPR) was passed to make New York eligible for federal funding from the Race to the Top program in 2010. Under this law, 97% of teachers in the state were rated either effective or highly effective. The law is ineffective. It should be wholly repealed, rather than amended as proposed. Let the state continue setting high standards for teachers and let local districts design their own evaluation plans, without requiring that they be tied to any sort of student test scores.”

Jamaal Bowman, Bronx middle school principal, said, “It is time to bring together parents, scholars, students, doctors, educators, and all who care about our children to create policy that equitably nurtures the brilliance in every child. Why are we still discussing teachers and standardized tests without discussing the toxic stress that greatly harms our children daily, and the lack of opportunity that exists for so many children across the state?”

“The entire idea of basing teacher evaluations on student growth is not only invalid, it is destructive. It alters the relationship between students and teachers–poorly performing students become a threat to job security. Districts will create new metrics that are just as unreliable and invalid as those based on the grades 3-8 test scores and Regents exams,” said Carol Burris, Executive Director of the Network for Public Education and a former New York State High School Principal of the Year.

“The day has come to call on all legislators to legislate and for all educators to educate. We need our legislators to stay out of the way when it comes to creating educational policy, especially when it has to do with evaluating teachers and principals. We need to bring trust back into the educational space. It all starts with trust, and we must trust the fact that using any test score to evaluate an educator is not only wrong, it’s just bad practice,” said Dr. Michael Hynes, Patchogue Medford School District.

The parents and educators in NYS who voted in this new legislative body are relying on them to slow down and take the necessary time to enact research-based legislation that will protect children, educators, and local control.

Please Take Action and write legislators in Albany to stop this speeding train!

NYSAPE is a grassroots coalition with over 50 parent and educator groups across the state.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Hoax, New York, Teacher Evaluations, Testing, VAM

Goliath Responds: I Am Not Goliath!

By dianeravitch
December 28, 2018 //
32

On December 23, I posted an email exchange I had with Mike Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, in which we disagreed about who was the Goliath and who was the David in the field of education.

Mike objected to my characterization of the billionaire-supported “Reform” movement as the Goliaths of American education, the behemoths making war on public schools. He insisted that his side–those supporting charter schools and vouchers–are the true Davids, and those who oppose them are the true Goliaths because we have the AFT and the NEA on our side.

I pointed out to him that the assets of the two big unions are not in the same league as the supporters of school choice, like the Waltons (at least $160 billion) and a long list of other multibillionaires, who avidly fund school choice, along with the U.S. Department of Education, which has shoveled billions into charter schools since 1994 (and will spend nearly $500 million on charters this year alone). You can’t be supported by billionaires, multiple foundations, the U.S. Department of Education, and call yourself the “David” of education.

My clincher, I thought, was to point out the Reformers’ absence from a Twitter campaign on #GivingTuesday sponsored by a website called #Benevity, which offered $10 for every retweet of its message (#BeTheGood) to the charity of your choice. Look at which groups were asking for $10 retweets. The Network for Public Education urged its followers to retweet the message so that we could be designated to receive $10 per tweet. We figured if we got 100 retweets, we could pull in $1,000. That amount of money means a lot to NPE. It means nothing, zero, nada, zilch to the well-funded “Reform” organizations. It means nothing to organization supported by the Waltons, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, etc.

I wrote:

On #GivingTuesday, I didn’t see a single Reformer group putting out a request for $10. Not one. Not TFA. Not Educators4Excellence. Not Stand for Children. Certainly not the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which is sitting on tens of millions of dollars and gets huge grants from a long list of foundations.

No, they get gifts of hundreds of thousands and millions from foundations like Walton, Gates, Arnold, Broad, and about 50 other foundations who like to do whatever the big boys and girls do.

Ahem. We proudly claim the title of David to your Goliath. We know how that turned out.

I was surprised to get a response from Mike Petrilli.

He wrote a series of emails to demonstrate that several Reform organizations asked for money on #GivingTuesday. He must have skipped over what I wrote, because not a single one of them asked their followers to retweet #Benevity’s message and get $10 for each retweet. As I wrote, “Not one.” Not one of them cares about a gift of $10. That is not even a rounding error in their budgets.

So here are the Reformer groups that Petrilli sent me to prove that they asked for donations on #GivingTuesday and their annual revenues as of 2016, the last date the figures are available on their public tax reports (thanks to Darcie Cimarusti of the NPE staff for collecting the 990 information).

National Alliance for Public Charter Schools
Annual revenues: $9,582,733

Education Reform Now (nonprofit arm of Democrats for Education Reform, the hedge fund managers’ group)
Annual revenues: $12,379,392

GreatSchools.Org
Annual revenues: $10,774,696

Center for Education Reform (loves all choices, except for public schools)
Annual Revenues: $4,090,687

Rocketship Education:
Total annual revenues: $82,957,671
Net income: $6,761,892
(There are separate reports for local and state Rocketships, like Rocketship DC and Rocketship Wisconsin)

Expect More Arizona
Annual revenues: $3,729,325

Bricolage (the new charter school that will replace the last public school in New Orleans)
Since the school has not opened yet, there are no tax forms, but it is supported by the Walton Family Foundation, NewSchools Venture Fund, New Schools for New Orleans, and the Arnold Foundation.

Washington State Charter Schools. No 990 forms yet, but the charter schools in Washington State were funded entirely by Bill Gates and a small group of billionaires, including Alice Walton, Nick Hanauer, Alice Walton, the parents of Jeff Bezos, and a few others with very deep pockets.

Why in the world would any of these organizations ask you to retweet a message that would win $10 for them?

Ahem. The Reform and privatization industry is a hobby of the billionaires. It is not a “movement.” Its purpose is to destroy public education and eliminate unions. It is a substitute for funding public schools, which 85% of American children choose.

If the money dried up, the entire edifice of privatization would shrivel and blow away.

Meanwhile, the Network for Public Education, whose annual revenues are not in the same league with the Reformers, would be delighted to receive your gift of $5, $10, $20, $50, $100. If 100 people give $10 each, that’s $1,000. That means a lot to us. Unlike the Reformer groups mentioned above, we don’t have office space. We have a Post Office Box. Not a penny of your donation will be wasted on exorbitant salaries or lavish facilities. We have no facilities! We have 1.5 staff members, and none of them is paid a six-figure salary. We are a lean, keen organization. Every dollar you give will support our work to protect, support, and improve public schools.

Make the Network for Public Education your charity of choice this year. We need the money. Don’t be fooled. We are the Davids of education. And you know how that turned out!

Categories Billionaires, Education Reform, Hoax, Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund

Gary Rubinstein: How Dumb is TFA?

By dianeravitch
December 27, 2018 //
35

Gary Rubinstein, ex-TFA, finds it startling that TFA issued a reading list that included “Waiting for Superman,” the discredited propaganda film of 2010.

https://garyrubinstein.wordpress.com/2018/12/26/tfa-puts-waiting-for-superman-on-its-must-see-list-for-2018/

It’s an embarrassment that TFA wants to dwell in the glorious past, but also an admission that their thinking is stuck in the past, the good old days when the future looked bright.

Categories Hoax, Propaganda, Teach for America

Students at Wilder High School in Idaho: Learning on iPads is a Hoax!

By dianeravitch
November 29, 2018 //
40

Ivanka Trump and Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, visited Wilder Elementary School to learn about the future of workforce preparation, which of course involves selling iPads to children in a K-6 school!

However, they did not speak to high school students in Wilder, Idaho, who are thoroughly disgusted with (de)personalized learning. Several protested the fraud that Wilder officials were selling to Ivanka and said they were not allowed to speak up.

So instead, they walked outside, stood in the cold for hours and told members of the local media they are concerned about Wilder’s reliance on technology, worry about the district’s low test scores and fear the education they are receiving in Wilder won’t prepare them for college or life after high school.

Nadia, a Wilder sophomore, wanted to make sure the public heard both sides of the iPad story.

“We came out to tell you guys what’s really going on with our school,” Nadia said. “We are not really learning anything. The teachers are not allowed to teach anything. We are learning on iPads all day and we have to wait at least a week or so to get a test unlocked. And a lot of kids have been falling behind and then they cover that up and say everyone’s on target.”

Thomas, a Wilder 11thgrader, agreed with Nadia.

“There are a lot of things going wrong at this school and every time we try to speak out about it we are shut down and kept quiet,” he said.

Thomas and Nadia said they walked out of class once they realized the school was about to be locked down for the visit. They said they were unsure if they would be allowed to return to school.

Student achievement data shows that Wilder lags behind the state average in several academic indicators. This fall, the State Department of Education identified Wilder Middle School as one of the lowest-performing schools in Idaho. At Wilder Elementary, where Trump and Cook checked in Tuesday, just 26.7 percent of students scored “proficient” on math Idaho Standards Achievement Test in 2017-18. At Wilder High School, the go-on rate in 2017 was 25 percent, well below the state average of 45 percent, according to Idaho EdTrends.

Categories Hoax, Idaho, Technology

José Espinosa: The Truth About Charter Schools That Boast About a 100% College Acceptance Rate

By dianeravitch
November 13, 2018 //
12

José Espinosa is the Superintendent of the Socorro Independent School District In Texas. This article appeared in the El Paso Times.

Superintendent Espinosa thinks the public should know the truth about charter schoools that claim to have a 100% college acceptance rate. They are lying. Rightwingers in Texas and charter promoters are planning on a big expansion of charters in the state, peddling their wares with unverified claims about their “success.”

He writes:

When something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Dating back to 1954, the Better Business Bureau used this catchphrase to alert the public of shady business practices.

In the new era of school choice, this catchphrase can be used to alert the public of misleading business practices by charter schools in order to protect our most prized possessions — our children.

Every year, certain charters tout a 100 percent college acceptance rate as their major marketing pitch to lure parents away from traditional public schools.

The reality is the public isn’t told acceptance to a four-year university is actually a graduation requirement at some charter schools.

It specifically states in certain charters’ student/family handbooks that a student may graduate and receive a diploma ONLY if the student is accepted into a four-year university and has completed 125 hours of community service.

Reading lengthy student/family handbooks carefully before considering charters is just as important as reading the fine print before signing contracts.

We must also ask, “Why is Corporate America bashing our traditional public schools, yet it doesn’t demand transparency or accountability from charter schools?”

While 100 percent of charter seniors get accepted to college as required, the public has a right to know the percentage of charter students who didn’t make it to their senior year.

Ed Fuller, Pennsylvania State University professor, found in one of his studies of a particular charter network that when considering the number of students starting in the ninth grade as a cohort, the percentage of charter cohort students who graduated and went on to college was at best 65 percent.

In other words, 35 percent of ninth-graders at a charter network didn’t make it to their graduation….

Just like the BBB, it is our duty to alert the public.

If charters insist on boasting about 100 percent college acceptance rates, then traditional public schools must insist that our communities be fully informed.

Charters’ news release could read: “Since we require students to get accepted to a four-year university in order to graduate, our seniors have a 100 percent college acceptance rate. However, more than 30 percent of our cohort students in the ninth grade didn’t graduate from our charters. Therefore, we had less than 70 percent of our cohort students graduate and get accepted to college…”

Lauding charters who lack transparency and discount students while bashing El Paso’s public schools disparages the hard work, relentless dedication and success of Team SISD.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Graduation rates, Hoax, Lies, Privatization, Testing
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