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Houston: Charter Founders Accused of Embezzling $2.6 Million

By dianeravitch
July 21, 2015 //
22

The founders of a highly touted charter school in Houston have been accused of embezzling $2.6 million from public funds.

“Five years ago, congratulatory letters poured in from politicians after the Varnett charter school in Houston won a federal “blue ribbon” award for its academic record. It was a standout among schools serving mostly poor, minority children.

“Marian Annette Cluff was the school’s founding and longtime superintendent. Her husband, Alsie Cluff Jr., was the facilities and operations manager.

“The once-heralded couple now faces potential prison sentences and fines after a 19-count indictment, announced Thursday by federal prosecutors, accused them of operating secret bank accounts and pocketing more than $1 million from parents for field trips and school fundraisers. The Cluffs are accused of embezzling more than $2.6 million intended to benefit the impoverished students they enrolled.

“The couple and their son and daughter earned more than $626,000 combined from Varnett in the 2013-2014 school year, according to state records, and the Cluffs own a south Houston home appraised at $1.7 million.”

Categories Charter Schools, Houston, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes

“Democracy”: The Failure of Leadership in Public Education to Support Sound Education

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2015 //
14

A regular commenter on the blog who calls him/herself “Democracy” posted these insightful thoughts about the state of “leadership” and its willingness to follow the corporate reform script instead of standing up for sound policies and practices that promote good education:

 

 

 

Part 1

 

I’ve been commenting on this blog for a while, lamenting the state of “leadership” in pubic education.

 

The fate of Joshua Starr in Montgomery County, MD is a good example. Starr was actually trying to bring more equity to the system, he wanted to de-emphasize testing, he opposed merit pay, and he was collaborative, generally. A teacher rep said Starr made sure teachers were “included in the decision-making process for most major decisions.” Still, Starr seemed to favor the Common Core, and in an interview with NPR he bragged about the county’s “SAT and AP scores.” Sigh.

 

Starr’s replacement was to have been Andrew Houlihan of Houston, who later withdrew his name from consideration.

 

Houlihan’s dissertation was on the use of data. He has described himself as “a big data person. I love using data to make decisions.” Except, apparently, Houlihan never really understood what the “data” said. He bragged about an Arnold Foundation grant that, he said, was “transforming” the recruitment of teachers. And he bragged about Houston’s merit pay program – ASPIRE – that, he said, rewarded “our most effective educators” for “accelerating student progress.”

 

The Arnold Foundation is a right-wing organization founded by a hedge-funder who resists accountability and transparency in derivatives markets but calls for them in education. Its executive director, Denis Cabrese was former chief of staff to DIck Armey, the Texas conservative who now heads up FreedomWorks, the group that helps to pull the Tea Party strings and gets funding from the billionaire arch-conservative Koch brothers.

 

Fairfax County recently hired Karen Garza, who was also in Houston. Garza led the ASPIRE program, a pay plan that was funded (in part) by the Broad, Gates and Dell foundations, the very same groups that fund corporate-style “reform” and that support the Common Core. And while researchers point out the dangers of value-added models, noting that they “cannot disentangle the many influences on student progress,” Garza said they were “proven methodology” that are both “valid and reliable.”

 

Fairfax and Montgomery, by the way, are considered two of the better school systems, nationally.

 

Part 2

 

Meanwhile, in the Commonwealth of Virginia, the Virginia Association of School Superintendents (VASS) recently concluded its Spring conference, titled “Inspiring Leadership for Innovation.” The conference was focused on “college and career readiness,” “leadership skills essential to changing school cultures,” and “superintendent success stories.” The featured speakers were Jean Claude Brizard and Marc Tucker.

 

Brizard has been a failure as a superintendent in Rochester and Chicago. According to a columnist who followed him closely, Brizard “engaged in gross misrepresentations of data and sometimes outright lied. He made promises he didn’t keep. He did one thing while saying another.” As to his two failed superintendencies, Brizard admits that “there were some mistakes made.”

 

Marc Tucker says that he wants high-stakes tests in grades 4, 8 and 10, and “the last exams would be set at an empirically determined college- and work-ready standard.” Additionally, “every other off year, the state would administer tests in English and mathematics beginning in grade 2, and, starting in middle school, in science too, on a sampling basis. Vulnerable groups would be oversampled to make sure that populations of such students in the schools would be accurately measured.” Tucker wants all schools systems to take PISA, because he thinks that the test scores of 15-year-olds are somehow tied tightly to economic growth and competitiveness. You know, jobs.

 

Sigh. Tucker just keeps regurgitating the same-old song, all over again: college and career “readiness.” To Tucker, that’s why public education exists. He says nary a word about citizenship.

 

And what about those jobs? The Bureau of Labor Statistics points out that most new jobs created in the United States over the next decade will NOT require postsecondary education. These are jobs like personal care aides, retail clerks, nursing assistants, janitors and maids, construction laborers, freight and stock movers, secretaries, carpenters, and fast food preparers.

 

http://www.bls.gov/ooh/most-new-jobs.htm

 

In addition to its Spring fling, VASS selected its 2016 superintendent of the year. While the award comes from VASS, a VASS-selected panel –– comprised of the state superintendent of instruction, and the heads of the Virginia Education Association, state PTA and state school boards association, the state ASCD, and the directors of the state associations of secondary and elementary school principals –– picked the winner. In other words, the top education “leaders” in the state –– those who should be familiar with research and evidence –– were responsible for choosing the state’s “best” superintendent.

 

A few years back, this recently-named “superintendent of the year” forced a test-score-tracking software program called SchoolNet on teachers. She was advised against it because of its problems, but she went ahead anyway. It ended up being a $2 million-plus failure. SchoolNet was later bought by Pearson. The superintendent is still withholding 268 SchoolNet-related emails from public scrutiny, claiming they are “exempt” from the Freedom of Information Act.

 

 

Part 3

 

This VASS-award-winner’s school division sent out what it called a “leadership” survey several years back. It was a skewed-question survey designed to produce pre-determined results. But it did allow for comments. And they were instructive. They included comments such as “..this is the worst leadership the county has ever had,” and “Honesty, integrity and fairness are lacking,” and “…teachers have very little voice, and “…the system does not care about me or most other employees as individuals, and “county schools leaders seem to be increasingly inept and far-removed from the day-to-day realities of public education.” Again and again and again, commenters said these things about the top “leadership:”

 

“does not listen to teachers…”
“does not ask what people think before it accepts major policies…”
* “…teachers are not listened to…our opinions have been requested and ignored…”
* “…when I offer my opinion, i has been dismissed.”
* “l..leaders seek input, but then usually, disregard the opinions of those not in agreement with the administration…decisions are made top-down before input is received.”
* “decision making is so top-down — stakeholders are seldom consulted…”
* “…decisions have already been made…”
* “…teachers feel that their professional judgment is not valued…”
* “most administrator are arrogant…and remove themselves with any type of collaborative dialogue with teachers.”
* “…they do not want to hear complaints, or you are labeled as a troublemaker…”
* “the county asks its employees for input but these requests are superficial…the decision have already been made by the people ‘downtown’…”
* “you ask people to think critically but we must toe the party line…”
* “We are not asked what we think…it is common knowledge here that you are not allowed to address concerns that may be negative…”
“I see few examples of teachers being involved in decision making.”

 

A blue ribbon resources utilization committee recommended a climate survey of the schools years earlier, noting that one had been done repeatedly in county government. Teachers asked for a climate survey in the schools too, and even offered to help write one. A climate survey still hasn’t been offered.

 

This “superintendent of the year” forced STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) “academies” on all of the county high schools. The original claim was that research showed a STEM “crisis” in America, and that this move was “visionary.” Norm Augustine, former CEO of Lockheed Martin – which has laid of thousands of STEM workers – was invited to the schools to make his STEM spiel. When asked for the “research,” the superintendent couldn’t produce any. There’s a reason for that. The research shows there is no “crisis,” no “shortage.” In fact, there’s a glut.

For example, Beryl Lieff Benderly wrote this stunning statement recently in the Columbia Journalism Review (see: http://www.cjr.org/reports/what_scientist_shortage.php?page=all ):

“Leading experts on the STEM workforce, have said for years that the US produces ample numbers of excellent science students. In fact, according to the National Science Board’s authoritative publication Science and Engineering Indicators 2008, the country turns out three times as many STEM degrees as the economy can absorb into jobs related to their majors.”

 

When VASS selected this “superintendent of the year” for 2016, it noted certain “indicators of success.” What were they? It cited an increase in the “number of students enrolled in AP courses” and SAT scores that were higher than the state average. Never mind that the SAT is not tied to the school curriculum and that this school division is one of the most affluent in the state. There is no better predictor of SAT score than family income.

 

The research on SAT – and ACT – and AP courses finds that they are mostly hype. The SAT and ACT just don’t do a good job of predicting success in college or life. Moreover, research finds that when demographic characteristics are controlled for, the oft-made claims made for AP disappear. In the ‘ToolBox Revisited’ (2006), a statistical analysis of the factors contributing to the earning of a bachelor’s degree, Adelman found that Advanced Placement did not reach the “threshold level of significance.” Other research finds that while “students see AP courses on their transcripts as the ticket ensuring entry into the college of their choice…there is a shortage of evidence about the efficacy, cost, and value of these programs.”

 

This is the current state of public education’s “leadership.”

 

Unlike the Allstate commercial, I don’t think we’re in ‘good hands.’

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Data and Data Mining, Houston, Virginia

The Ratliffs of Texas Fight for Public Education

By dianeravitch
November 9, 2014 //
5

The Ratliff family in Texas are heroes of public education, they are moderate Republicans, and they been steadfast advocates for public schools.

They recently co-wrote an article that explains why vouchers are the wrong path for Texas.

“Bill Ratliff of Mount Pleasant is a former state senator and lieutenant governor of Texas; Thomas Ratliff of Mount Pleasant represents District 9 on the State Board of Education; state Rep. Bennett Ratliff of Coppell represents District 115 in the Texas House.”

Categories Houston, Race to the Top, Resistance, Supporting public schools, Texas, Vouchers

“Effective” Teachers Fleeing Houston Because of Flawed VAM

By dianeravitch
August 25, 2014 //
16

Audrey Amrein-Beardsley reports that highly rated teachers are leaving the Houston public schools because of the erratic EVAAS measure. Seven teachers are suing the district based on its erratic measure.

In this post, she tells the story of a teacher with 15 years experience who prefers teaching in high-needs schools.

“The one teacher highlighted in this piece, “holds a mathematics degree from the University of Houston, has taught all levels of high school mathematics for 15 years…and has repeatedly pursued assignments in high-needs schools with large Latino populations. While administrators, parents and peers have consistently rated him as a highly effective teacher, his EVAAS scores have varied wildly. While at [one district high school], he earned one of the highest EVAAS scores and year-end bonuses possible. Two years ago, teaching the same subject at [another high school] he received a below-average EVAAS score.” This teacher decided to leave the high-needs school in which his students’ performance apparently “biased” his results. He explained, “I can’t afford to be heroic. I want to be in the toughest schools, but the EVAAS model interprets my students’ challenges as my personal [and professional] failure.”

Teachers in training, she reports, are shunning Houston because of the flawed EVAAS.

Don’t forget: the purpose of EVAAS was to ensure that HISD had only “great teachers.” When will district leaders recognize it is driving away its best teachers?

Categories Houston, Teacher Evaluations

Houston: A Teacher Struggling to Survive in a “Model” District

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2014 //
48

Rachel Fairbank is a first-year teacher in Houston. She
always wanted to be a teacher. She was inspired by her own
teachers. But
she is drowning in paperwork, busywork, mandates, and
directives. She doesn’t know if she will make it. The
district does nothing to support her as a new teacher. Houston was
honored by the Broad Foundation as the most improved urban district
in the nation (reprising its Broad award from a decade ago–HISD
seems to have improved, then stopped improving, and is now
improving again). Houston is everything that Broad admires: it
gives performance pay; it fires teachers. It believes in carrots
and sticks. But the story Rachel tells is of a district that
disrespects teachers. Across the nation, teachers are leaving the
profession. Veteran teachers are leaving, new teachers are leaving.
How much longer can this continue without seriously damaging the
education profession and hurting children? She writes:
Every morning, as I gear up for another day, I wonder if
this will be the day that I become another one of the teachers who
burns out and quits. Sometimes I feel like I am running a race
against time, waiting to see what will happen first – adapt to the
demands of the job or burn out? I went into
teaching because I know – in a very tangible fashion – just how
much of a difference teachers can make. My teachers pushed me to
realize my potential. I am the youngest of
seven children, born into a family with few resources. I worked my
way through college, graduating without my parents’ financial
assistance, without taking out loans and while maintaining a
cumulative 3.6 average at Cornell University, a top-tier university
well-known for its rigor, and later receiving a fistful of
acceptances from top graduate programs….The truth is that there simply aren’t
enough hours in the day to do everything that is required of me.
There is always something, whether it’s a training requirement or
writing tests or preparing my lessons or grading papers or
counseling struggling students. Some things get finished. Most
things do not. My working life is an uneasy
calculation between the most pressing need and the requirements
that I hope can remain unfinished. Sometimes I feel like I am
always on the verge of failure, one tiny slip or miscalculation
away from either being fired or failing my students.
I find myself longing for fewer students or fewer classes
or fewer training requirements, all in the hopes that I can hunker
down and concentrate on becoming a good teacher. An effective
teacher. In the recent report issued by the
Broad Foundation, which honored the district in the fall as the
nation’s top urban school system, the foundation makes the
following observation about HISD:
“High-performing personnel are rewarded through
performance pay, and ineffective personnel are exited. The district
links teacher evaluations to student performance, providing bonuses
to top performers. Every teacher in the district is placed into one
of four performance tiers. Before 2009, the district did not
differentiate its teachers, and only 4 percent of teachers had
growth plans. Today, all teachers in the bottom quartile are on
growth plans and top teachers mentor others.”
I look around me and I see teachers who are overworked
and stressed. To be given a staggering workload – and then to work
at a job that is increasingly more insecure – is to work in an
environment that callously churns through employees.
HISD makes a point of noting that ineffective teachers
are forced to leave the district. What I wonder is how many of
these teachers who leave are truly ineffective and how many are
made ineffective simply due to the overwhelming
workload? When I think back to the teachers
who made the greatest impact on me, very few were the new teachers.
Most of them were veteran educators who had the experience and
skill necessary to make a lasting impact. Will I make
it?

Categories Houston, Teachers and Teaching

Houston Learned from Los Angeles What NOT to Do with Technology

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2014 //
16

The Los Angeles iPad program has become a national lesson in what NOT to do.

Other districts, watching the slow-motion disaster in L.A., are taking heed and planning their purchases and implementation of technology with greater care than was exercised in the nation’s second largest district.

L.A. committed to spend $1 billion on iPads, pre-loaded with Pearson content.

The controversies about cost, use, lack of training, theft, loss, misuse of construction bond funds, etc. became an object lesson for other districts, as this post by Education Week reporter Benjamin Herold shows.

Houston is the exemplar district in Herold’s article.

It is starting with 18,000 laptops–not iPads–for its high school students. Eventually all high school teachers and principals will receive training, as will students.

The Houston initiative, known as PowerUp, aims to distribute roughly 65,000 laptops—enough for every high school student and high school teacher in the district—by the 2015-16 school year. Eventually, the initiative is expected to cost about $18 million annually; this year, the Houston ISD is dishing out $6 million, all of it existing funds that were reallocated from other sources. The 2013-14 school year is being devoted to a step-by-step pilot program, and Schad—who previously oversaw implementation of a successful “bring your own device” initiative in Texas’ 66,000-student Katy Independent School District—said the district is entering the 1-to-1 computing fray with eyes wide open.

“We’re really focused on changing instruction,” Schad said, “but it’s important to appreciate how much of a cultural shift this really is.”

Last fall, the 641,000-student Los Angeles Unified School District became the symbol for 1-to-1 initiatives gone awry; almost from its inception, the effort was plagued by security issues, confusion about who is responsible for the tens of thousands of iPads being distributed, criticisms around cost and how the initiative is being financed, and concerns about the readiness and quality of the pre-loaded curriculum meant to become the primary instructional materials for the nation’s second-largest district. Following a series of skirmishes with the district’s board and teachers’ union, Superintendent John Deasy has been forced to slow his ambitious rollout plans.

Houston chose laptops because that is the technology students are most likely to use in college.

Both students and staff will have advance training:

Students at most of the 11 high schools involved in this year’s Houston ISD pilot are just receiving their laptops this month, but Schad said the principals and teachers at those schools received their computers in August and have been receiving consistent professional development ever since. As a baby step to test the district’s deployment plans, laptops were distributed to students at three schools in October, and all students have been required to take a digital citizenship class before receiving a computer. And in November, a group of Houston principals and district administrators took an extended field trip to Mooresville, N.C., to observe first hand one of the most acclaimed 1-to-1 initiatives in the country.

This nifty interactive timeline from Houston ISD details the district’s cautious step-by-step approach. It stands in sharp contrast to L.A., where a contract with Apple was signed in July, teachers received three days of training in August, and distribution of an initial batch of 37,000 iPads to students began later that month.

Another difference from L.A. is that Houston is not buying pre-loaded (and unfinished) Pearson content:

Whereas L.A. Unified elected to purchase a soup-to-nuts digital curriculum from education publishing giant Pearson—one that is still being developed even as it’s rolled out, comes at undetermined cost, and to which access will expire at the end of three years—Schad said Houston ISD is focused on providing students and teachers with a suite of “Web 2.0” tools that can foster content creation, collaboration among students, and project-based learning.

“We want to create that space inside a classroom where kids are answering questions inside the same document, posting their own opinions, and creating videos,” Schad said. “It’s about changing the culture.”

And also unlike L.A., Houston will not take money from bond funds, but is looking for savings in other areas.

It is refreshing to see that districts can learn from the mistakes of other districts. Maybe Houston will get it right and show how technology can “change the culture.”

Categories Houston, Los Angeles, Technology, Computers

Hugh Bailey on Vallas: Don’t Believe in Miracles

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2013 //
9

Hugh Bailey is tired of the oft-told tale of the miracle district and the “savior” who comes in on a white horse, turns around a low-performing district, then rides off into the sunset. He is writing in this case about Paul Vallas, but he is looking at the repeated stories of miracle districts (think Houston) and miracle-makers (think Rod Paige, Paul Vallas, and the list could go on.)

If only the people with access to the big media would acknowledge how hard it is to improve schools and districts. Anyone who says that it can be done easily, quickly, and on the cheap is not telling the truth. Change comes slowly or it isn’t real and doesn’t last.

Categories Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Vallas, Paul

This May Sound Familiar

By dianeravitch
August 30, 2012 //
8

A reader in the U.K. sent this editorial about business leaders’ complaints about poorly educated workers. He thought it was interesting to note that the same laments are heard on both sides of the Atlantic ocean. I have noticed that such laments are often concurrent with a big push to outsource jobs to countries that pay a small fraction of what local workers expect to be paid.

Yet, as I read the editorial, I remembered reading a few years ago that Sir Michael Barber, late of McKinsey, now at Pearson, was supposed to have successfully reformed the British education system. Barber is a big believer in targets and testing, accountability and school closing. His ideas have been influential in supporting the NCLB regime, giving it a patina of legitimacy, based in part on his reputation for having reformed British education.

Barber calls his philosophy of  education “deliverology.”

Apparently, “deliverology” saved British education, and now it needs to be saved again.

Schools have this nasty habit of getting unreformed not long after they were reformed. Arne Duncan reformed Chicago, but now it has to be reformed again. Paul Vallas reformed Philadelphia (and Chicago, too) but now it has to be reformed again.

Reforms have this odd life cycle: first comes the press release, then the sustained publicity campaign, and then the reforms quietly dissolve. And the cycle begins again. The Houston Independent School District is on the Broad Foundation’s list of possible winners of its annual prize. Houston was the first district to win the prize some years ago. Then it had to be reformed all over again. New York City has been reformed for the past decade, and chances are that the next mayor will want to reform the reforms.

The only question that remains is not whether the reforms will be reformed, but whether they will be replaced by something different (which would involve admitting that mistakes were made), or whether reformers will do more of the same, with greater intensity.

And so it goes.

Categories Chicago, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Houston, International

A Challenge to KIPP

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2012 //
48

Anyone who questions the slow–now rapid–advance of the charter school industry, anyone who wonders whether our nation is in process of developing (or re-creating) a dual school system, will sooner or later get the KIPP question: Doesn’t KIPP prove definitively that poverty doesn’t matter? Doesn’t KIPP prove that charter schools are superior to public schools? Doesn’t KIPP prove that any child, no matter what their circumstances, can excel?

I admit that I have not waded into this debate because I acknowledge that some charters get excellent results, some get abysmal results, but on average, charters do NOT get better results than public schools. (Results, in this case, meaning test scores, which seem to be the only thing that matters in these discussions.)

When I visited Houston in the fall of 2010 to lecture at Rice, KIPP and TFA were my hosts. Michael Feinberg gave me a tour of his leading school, which looked like any public school, and introduced me to his top staff at lunch. We had a down-home visit and I like Michael. When I gave my lecture, I chastised KIPP for encouraging the public perception that all charter schools are better than all public schools and for failing to denounce the growing numbers of incompetent, corrupt, and inept charter schools. I talked about the oft-heard complaint that KIPP cherry picks its students and has high attrition, which KIPP denies. I challenged KIPP to take over an entire inner city school district that was willing and show what it could do when no one was excluded.

Needless to say, KIPP has not taken my advice and continues to expand its brand from district to district, with only a few schools in each district.

A recent article by Gerald Coles reviews the research about KIPP and notes that KIPP has a rapid-response to any questioning of its accomplishments, which KIPP says are now well documented. Coles points out that the research KIPP relies on was funded by corporations and foundations that have previously given KIPP millions of dollars. He calls it the “KIPP-funders’ funded research.”  And he asks this question:

Can there be any bias in research bankrolled by the corporate contributors of the very company whose product the researchers were expected to validate? We are all familiar with the long history of industry-supported research, such as that of tobacco, drug, auto, and coal companies, all conducted by credentialed researchers, all of whom invariably produced findings that supposedly confirmed the value and safety of the products they were paid to investigate. This research on KIPP schools can be described in various ways, but “independent” surely has to take at least second place to “KIPP-funders funded research.”

Coles’ review of the research–both that conducted by the funders’ funding and that of independent researchers–is worth reading.

Whenever anyone says that KIPP schools spend more than neighborhood public schools, KIPP adamantly denies it. Coles reasonably asks how the many tens of millions raised by KIPP were spent if not on its schools.

Behind the back and forth about the research is a larger question. What is KIPP really trying to prove? Do they want the world to believe that poverty, homelessness, disabilities, extreme family circumstances, squalid living conditions have no effect on children’s readiness to learn? Doesn’t KIPP imply that schools can achieve 100% proficiency if they act like KIPP?

If that is the lesson they want to teach, then I reiterate my challenge of two years ago: KIPP should find an impoverished district that is so desperate that it is willing to put all its students into KIPP’s care. Take them all: the children with disabilities, the children who don’t speak English, the children who are homeless, the children just released from the juvenile justice system,  the children who are angry and apathetic, and everyone else. No dumping. No selection. No cherry picking.

Show us what you can do. Take them all.

Categories Charter Schools, Houston, KIPP Charter Schools

The Failure of Corporate Reform (2)

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2012 //
2

It turns about that Houston has been awarding test-based bonuses for years. It turns about that tying test scores to scores has not been good for teachers or students. It turns out that the ratings jump around from year to year. They are inaccurate, unreliable, and unstable. Value-added assessment, as everyone recognizes, creates massive pressure to raise scores on standardized tests of questionable value. The more pressure, the less reliable the scores. The more pressure, the more teaching to the test and the more cheating.  (http://nepc.colorado.edu/blog/houston-you-have-problem)

Value-added assessment is inherently incapable of producing better education because it does not measure better education. It only measures test scores. Higher test scores are a byproduct of better education. If you aim for the scores, you miss the target. The target is deeper understanding, greater knowledge, more thoughtful writing, more careful observation, a greater love of learning. The very act of measuring destroys the target instead of bringing it closer.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Houston, Testing, Texas
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