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Joseph Batory: The Betrayal of Pennsylvania’s Public Schools by the Legislature

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2017 //
4

Joseph Batory, a retired superintendent in Pennsylvania, has been speaking out loud and clear about the deliberate defunding of public schools in Pennsylvania and other issues.

In this post, he describes the betrayal of the public schools by the Legislature:


The betrayal of Pennsylvania public schools by the State legislature began in the early 1990’s when Pennsylvania government consciously destroyed its Equalized Subsidy for Basic Education (ESBE) formula. That method of State funding had been successfully used to bridge the wide gaps between poorer and more affluent school districts. The ESBE formula each year had utilized factors of community wealth and pupil population to drive out annual subsidies to school systems that distributed State money equitably based on each school district’s affluence and pupil population. Unfortunately, the growing costs of this ESBE formula to the State budget, despite its positive impacts, caused cowardly politicians fearing necessary tax increases to eliminate the ESBE funding formula. This result has been that over two decades, billions of dollars in State subsidies have been denied to school districts across the Commonwealth.

Pennsylvania now has the widest disparities in the nation in spending among its wealthiest and poorest districts with pupils who live in poverty and need the most getting the least, while students in wealthier districts live with all sorts of educational and school enhancements. This legislative incompetence has created a system where the gaps of per-pupil spending among Pennsylvania’s 500 school districts are now enormous, ranging from $9,800 to $28,400.

In September of 2016, attorneys representing seven school districts appeared before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court seeking judicial intervention in education funding in Pennsylvania. Commonwealth Court had dismissed this case last year.

The lawsuit contends that the State is not fulfilling its Constitutional duty as specified: “to provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of public education,” and that the resulting inequalities violate “equal rights protections.”

Pennsylvania courts have previously dismissed challenges to the legislature’s inadequate funding of public education using the argument that legislative matters are beyond review by the courts. However, NB—in 27 other states, the courts have intervened in similar circumstances and forced responsible behavior from state legislatures.

Incredibly, a representative of the Commonwealth made this outrageous argument before the Supreme Court in September: “No individual child has any specific right to an education at all. The Constitution requires the State only to set up a system…” According to this State representative, Pennsylvania has no responsibility to give children an adequate education or a quality education, but just to make sure schools exist.

City Councilperson Helen Gym termed this State position as “a deplorable argument that should shock the sensibilities of every Pennsylvanian. … One, that education is not a right – (It is in fact!) – and, Two, that inequity is not only inevitable, it is unfixable…”

Helen Gym could not be more on point: The Pennsylvania Constitution’s wording clearly stipulates “maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of public education” as a State responsibility.

Yet children in some Pennsylvania school districts have lavish swimming pools, while others graduate from schools without ever having used a computer or seen a library, attorney Brad Elias, representing several school districts, parents and civil rights groups, told the Supreme Court.

While states on average contribute a 45% share of public education funding, Pennsylvania’s share is at about 36%, ranking the Commonwealth 45th in the USA in terms of State support for education.

The Commonwealth’s political betrayal of its own public schools is a national disgrace. It remains to be seen if the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has the political will to correct this malfeasance.

Categories Accountability, Funding, Inequity, Pennsylvania

New York: Parents Sue Cuomo to Release “Frozen” Funds for Neediest Schools

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2017 //
7

The Education Law Center is suing Governor Cuomo on behalf of parents at some of New York state’s neediest schools, seeking the release of $37 million the state owes these schools. :


PARENTS ASK NY APPEALS COURT TO RELEASE ILLEGALLY FROZEN SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT FUNDS

Parents of students in three public schools are asking a New York appeals court to immediately release over $37 million in improvement grant funds frozen a year ago by Governor Andrew Cuomo.

The latest request comes in a lawsuit filed by the parents charging the Cuomo Administration’s budget director, Robert Mujica, with violating the law when he refused to release grants previously appropriated by the Legislature to boost programs and services in twenty, high need schools across the state. Education Law Center represents the plaintiff parents and students.

On December 28, 2016, Judge Kimberly O’Connor in Albany found that the budget director exceeded his legal authority in withholding the grants and ordered the funds be immediately released to the NY State Education Department for distribution to support vital programs in the schools.

Governor Cuomo decided to appeal Judge O’Connor’s ruling last month. Under New York law, the appeal triggers an automatic stay of the order to release the funds. The parents are now asking the appeals court to lift the stay, citing the irreparable harm to students if the schools are unable to implement the programs supported by the grant funds.

“If the grant money is not released pending this appeal, hundreds of children in New York’s neediest schools will lose educational opportunities that they cannot regain,” said Wendy Lecker, ELC senior attorney. “Education is cumulative, so when students are deprived of the support needed for learning that not only limits their achievement this year, but impedes progress as they move to subsequent grades.”

In affidavits filed in support of the parents’ request to the appeals court, administrators from three of the schools deprived of the grant funds – Hackett Middle School in Albany, Roosevelt High School in Yonkers, and JHS 80 Mosholu Parkway Middle School in the Bronx – detailed the essential programs they can no longer provide without the grants. These include extended learning time, social work and counseling, family outreach, academic intervention and professional development. The programs were implemented in 2015-16 with the first year of grant funds, but are on hold since the Governor decided to withhold the second year of funding.

Numerous programs have been held up by the Governor’s action:

Hackett Middle School discontinued extended instructional time to provide students with additional academic assistance and professional development for teachers.

Roosevelt High School cut a literacy/math coach and parent coordinator; discontinued professional development opportunities for teachers; and eliminated or sharply curtailed weekend and after-school extended learning time, college visits and CTE pathways.

JHS 80 Mosholu Parkway Middle School could not implement any of its proposed programs, including mentoring for at-risk students, social workers and guidance counselors for their extended day program, and professional development for teachers.

The appropriation for the grants will lapse in March 2018. If the funds are not released pending the appeal, the schools may lose access to the remainder of the funds, permanently depriving students of the opportunity to benefit from the programs and services the grants were intended to support.

Education Law Center Press Contact:
Sharon Krengel
Policy and Outreach Director
skrengel@edlawcenter.org
973-624-1815, x 24

Categories Accountability, Funding, Inequity, Injustice, New York, New York City

The Guardian: “What Would Jesus Do?”

By dianeravitch
February 21, 2017 //
46

Now that we are enmeshed in a federal government run by so-called evangelicals, it seems appropriate to hear another interpretation of the phrase “What would Jesus do?”

Here it is in the Guardian, by Stephen W. Thrasher. This is not a time to “be nice,” he writes.

He begins like this:

As a social justice minded Christian, my favorite depictions of Jesus are from Matthew 21:12, when he is seen with a whip in his hand, flipping over tables in a rage and driving merchants from the temple. This is the Christ who speaks to me when I look at the mess that is contemporary America and ask myself “What would Jesus Do?”. He was a righteously furious Middle Eastern Jew, who’d been born while his mother was migrating and grew up to put the fear of God into capitalists, putting them on the run with a whip.

This Jesus is angry, and he’s a great role model for the American left, which has been cowed into thinking it must be passive and “nice” in the face of oppression.

Forgoing anger will not save us. Indeed, perhaps the only good thing about Donald Trump is that he’s allowed some wider consideration of what Audre Lorde called the “uses of anger” in mainstream left American discourse….

But for too long, a misinterpretation of Martin Luther King as never angry (when his speeches, marches and actions against poverty, racist labor exploitation and war were full of fury) , and the too-polite Barack Obama, have lulled the left into avoiding anger and its useful productiveness in demanding change.

No more. Trump – an angry, intemperate manchild who bullies whomever he can – has unleashed the left’s anger. And it’s high time we let it out.

Categories Inequity, Injustice, Resistance

Julian Vasquez Heilig: Are Charters the Answer?

By dianeravitch
February 19, 2017 //
24

The short answer: No.

Julian Vasquez Heilig explains why charters are not the answer to inequity. They deepen inequity.

Here is an excerpt:

My Confession is that I am a former charter Volunteer (MN), Educator (CA), Parent (TX) and Donor (CA) I’ve also publish peer reviewed research on charters.

I am a scholar. We are in pursuit and convinced by evidence. So I’d like to talk about evidence today.

Here are 10 things to consider about the market-based charter schools debate:

Where did market-based school choice come from? Writing in the 1960s, academics such as the libertarian economist Milton Friedman, followed by John Chubb and Terry Moe in the 1990s, argued for a profit-based education system where resources are controlled by private entities rather than by democratically elected governments. They recommended a system of public education built around parent-student choice, school competition, and school autonomy as a solution to what they saw as the problem of direct democratic control of public schools.

School “choice” does not cure the inequality created by markets. Not surprisingly, the academics neglected to mention that market-based mechanisms are the very system that created the inequities in American public schools today. Along with other public policies, including redlining, market forces created racial and economic segregation. Instead of making this situation better, school choice made this situation worse. Research by the UCLA Civil Rights project has demonstrated this fact. I have included this report and other resources in your green folders. I have a few extra packets that I can give to folks after my presentation.

What does the research tell us that happens when everyone has choice? Also known as Universal choice? A group of economists mentored by Friedman, the Chicago Boys, took Friedman’s theories about education back to their home country and to push an education system with universal choice and relaxed regulation and oversight. Over the past several decades, Chile simultaneously became one of the richest countries in South America and the most unequal developed country in the world. In markets there are winners and losers.s I also recommend you check out Linda Darling-Hammond’s, a Stanford Professor, new book Global Education Reform Movement. This book examines countries around the world and finds that market-based reforms have failed spectacularly when compared with equity-based reforms.

The position of the NAACP and Black Lives Matter on privatization is consistent with the views of past civil rights leaders.NAACP co-founder E.B. Du Bois, in his essay Negroes and the Crisis of Capitalism in the U.S., extolled the virtues of collaborative social and government action. He railed against the role of businesses and capitalistic control that “usurp government” and made the “throttling of democracy and distortion of education and failure of justice widespread.” Malcolm X characterized market-based public policy as “vulturistic” and “bloodsucking.” He advocated for collaborative social systems to solve problems. Martin Luther King Jr. argued that we often have socialism in public policy for the rich and rugged free market capitalism for the poor. White academics pressing for market-based school choice in the name of “civil rights” ignore this history of African American civil rights leaders advocating for collaborative systems of social support and distrusting “free market” policies.

Is the NAACP and Black Lives Matter position on schools out of touch with civil rights? A barrage of criticism has come from market-based school choice proponents and charter operators about the NAACP and Black Lives Matter resolutions. However, the NAACP has for years been consistent in its critique of charters schools. At the 2010 convention, the NAACP national board and members supported a resolution saying that state charter schools create “separate and unequal conditions.” A review of ten years of research supports their statement. I have included the review of research in your packets. More recently, in 2014, the NAACP connected school choice with the private control of public education. More recently, the 2016 resolution includes a variety of civil rights-based critiques such as a lack of accountability, increased segregation, and disparate punitive and exclusionary discipline for African Americans.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Inequity, Privatization

John Merrow: Educators Must Stop the Bullying or Face the Consequences

By dianeravitch
January 7, 2017 //
31

John Merrow reminds his readers that bullying is illegal. It is not enough simply to react or to comfort students after the fact. Only in the era of Trump would this conversation take place. Just because the president does it, doesn’t make it either right or legal.

 

Merrow writes:

 

As schools reopen in the New Year and Donald Trump’s inauguration draws near, the reality of dramatic increases in hate speech and hate behavior cannot be ignored. Educators need to know that merely reacting to offenses will not be adequate. The adults in charge need to step up and be proactive. They must draw some very clear lines about what behavior will not be tolerated. It’s not enough to offer counseling and sympathetic hugs after the fact!

 

Why? Not just for the right reason–to support vulnerable students–but also to cover their own butts, because ‘after the fact’ actions, no matter how warm and supportive, are insufficient, inappropriate and almost certainly illegal.

 

The law is very much on the side of the victims, and school authorities ought to know that they are obligated under federal law to protect young people. I am not referring to anti-bullying legislation, which differs to state to state, but to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, sometimes known as ‘That damned sports law.’ Title IX clearly prohibits sexual harassment, and, even when bullying is ostensibly directed against an individual’s race, ethnicity or religion, it almost invariably includes sexual references. Girls are called “sluts” and “hos,” boys are called “fags’ and other names. Sexual rumors and comments are frequent. And the above behavior violates the granddaddy of all laws in this area, Title IX.

 

Title IX also prohibits these behaviors outside the school, such as when personal computers are used, when the behavior is disruptive to learning or affects a student’s ability to partake of the opportunities for learning and in other opportunities provided by the school. In short, schools and school administrator, under Title IX, are obligated to stop sexual cyber-bullying. Moreover, they stand to lose federal funding if they do not. Some school districts have paid 6-figure settlements for their demonstrated failure to protect students from harassment and cyber-bullying.

 

Only this president is free to bully people and groups with impunity. You are not!

 

 

Categories Bias, Inequity, Racism, Students
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