Archives for category: Los Angeles
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Red Queen in L.A.: No, We Do Not Need a Yelp for Schools

By dianeravitch
September 30, 2019 //
12

The charter Industry faction on the Los Angeles School Board wants to introduce a Jeb Bush-style evaluation system to rank and rate schools. It hasn’t worked anywhere else in the nation, so why not introduce it in Los Angeles.

Every other state has demonstrated that the school grading system ranks schools by the income of parents. Schools that enroll the poorest children get the lowest grades. Schools that enroll affluent children get the highest grades.

The purpose of school grades is to set schools up to be privatized.

Sara Roos, who blogs as Red Queen in L.A., writes that the school district does not need a Yelp system. She is right.

She points out that board member Jackie Goldberg wants the school system to help schools that are in need of support, not devise a system to call them “failures.”

The charter advocates are pushing the Jeb Bush Plan because it will help build the charter industry. It will do nothing for children.

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Los Angeles, Privatization, Testing

Investigate Nick Melvoin! Sign This Petition if You Agree

By dianeravitch
September 20, 2019 //
14

Did Los Angeles board member Nick Melvoin share privileged information with the representatives of the charter school industry?

Please sign this petition to call for an investigation. 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization

Carl Petersen: The Flaw in California’s Charter Reform Legislation

By dianeravitch
September 6, 2019 //
7

Carl Petersen, a veteran of the charter wars in Los Angeles, writes her about the serious defect in the charter reform law.

The law finally allows local school boards to determine whether proposed charter schools will damage the fiscal stability of the public schools, a welcome change.

But it also allows the unelected County Board of Education to overturn the decisions of the elected district school board. If the elected school boards determine that the proposed charter will damage the district, the unelected County Board can reject the decision of the local elected board. That is just plain wrong.

And nowhere is it wronger than in Los Angeles, where Corporate Reformers funded by billionaires fight to control the LAUSD school board. When the public manages to get the upper hand, the decisions of the school board can be overruled by a charter-friendly unelected county school board.

The county board in LA is dominated by phony Reformers, including the candidate who lost to George McKenna, a true friend of public schools, and Kate Braude, the executive director of astroturf Speak Up, the voice of the charter industry.

Elected officials should have the last word, not charter shills.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Hoax, Los Angeles, Privatization

Los Angeles: Astroturf “Parent” Group Pressures Beutner to Rate Schools by Their Test Scores

By dianeravitch
September 6, 2019 //
25

With so much billionaire cash sloshing around California to promote charter schools and to disparage public schools, it can be difficult to know which groups are real and which are Memorex.

Here is one that definitely is not a real parents’ group. It is called Speak Up and it is populated with people who are embedded in the charter sector. It recently chastised L.A. Superintendent Austin Beutner for not moving swiftly enough to clamp ratings on every school, the better to close them with and set them up for privatization. How will parents know how to choose a school if the district doesn’t give it a grade or a rating? They say he is in danger of “breaking a promise” to the parents of Los Angeles, who are longing to have their schools rated.

Schools should be evaluated based on such issues as their class size; the experience of their teachers; the resources invested by the district, such as: does the school have a library with a librarian? Does it have a school nurse? Does it have classes in the arts for all students?

But Speak Up seems to be interested mostly in test scores. Are they going up or down? Most people these days recognize that test scores measure the demographics of the students enrolled, not the quality of the school.

So who is this group?

Its founder and executive director is Katie Braude, a former KIPP executive. Until recently, she was on the Los Angeles County Board of Education, which has the power to overrule the LAUSD Board of Education on charter school decisions.

On Speak Up’s board of directors is Russell Altenburg, who is also connected to KIPP, was a program officer at the Broad Foundation, and a fellow at the NewSchools Venture Fund. And he was part of the “inaugural cohort” at the Pahara Next Gen Network.

Mary Najera was a founder of the Los Angeles Parents Union, now known as the Parent Revolution, which used the Parent Trigger law to try to convert public schools into charter schools. Parent Revolution was funded by Walton, Broad, Gates, Arnold and other billionaires. She is “chief community officer” at the Extera Public Schools charter chain.

Rene Rodman is another member of the board of directors of Speak Up. She is a also on the board of the Palisades Charter High School, where she served as president.

Aida Rodriguez is Vice President of Advocacy and Government Relations at Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, a charter school network. She too worked for Parent Revolution.

Speak Up is an organization led by charter school advocates. Twenty percent of the students in Los Angeles are enrolled in charter schools. Eighty percent are not.

Nowhere on Speak Up’s website does it list the names of its funders. One can only guess. Waltons? Broad? Hastings? Gates?

When you see a press release from Speak Up, remember that they are speaking up for Eli Broad, Reed Hastings, the Waltons, Bill Gates, and the charter industry, not for the 80 percent of students in the public schools.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Parent Groups, Privatization

Michael Kohlhaas Reveals That Lawyer at Green Dot Released Emails to Him, Then Quit or Was Fired

By dianeravitch
September 3, 2019 //
9

Michael Kohlhaas has been drip-drip-dripping emails between and among the charter industry’s bigwigs in Los Angeles.

He reveals in this post that he filed a public records request for the emails and his request was granted by the in-house counsel for Green Dot charter chain, Keith Yanov. Lo and behold, Mr. Yanov has “transitioned” to the private sector, meaning that he either quit or was fired.

Kohlhaas writes:

KEITH YANOV — FORMERLY GENERAL COUNSEL FOR GREEN DOT CHARTER SCHOOLS — HAS “TRANSITIONED TO PRIVATE PRACTICE” — WHICH MEANS HE QUIT OR WAS FIRED — AND GIVEN THAT IT WAS ALMOST CERTAINLY HIS DECISION TO FOLLOW THE LAW AND RELEASE THAT MASSIVE SET OF EMAILS TO ME IN JUNE — REVEALING THE APPALLING INNER WORKINGS OF THE CALIFORNIA CHARTER SCHOOL ASSOCIATION — THE WORLD-SHAKING MAGNITUDE OF WHICH IS STILL ONLY BARELY KNOWN — I WOULD VENTURE A GUESS THAT THE LATTER IS NOT IMPOSSIBLE — FIRING SOMEONE FOR FOLLOWING THE LAW CERTAINLY WOULDN’T BE OUT OF CHARACTER OVER THERE AT GREEN DOT — OR ANY OF THESE CHARTER SCHOOL CRIMINAL CONSPIRACIES FOR THAT MATTER

Kohlhaas began publishing the bombshell contents of the emails, Howard Blume of the Los Angeles Times wrote about Kohlhaas’s revelations, and all hell broke loose.

Kohlhaas wrote:

And then things really blew up, as you may already know. Howard Blume of the Los Angeles Times published two separate articles based on this material, the first one and the second one. The material revealed that Austin Beutner was letting the CCSA write his speeches for him and Nick Melvoin was letting them write actual board resolutions and also slipping them confidential info from LAUSD’s general counsel at the very same time that CCSA was suing LAUSD.

These documents recently showed that CCSA’s ultimate goal is to have every kid in California essentially in a charter school by 2030. And, friend, the revelations are not done even now, just wait and see. And the silence from CCSA has been amazing. The day I put out the news about CCSA writing Beutner’s speech charter school PR flack Cassy Horton dismissively tweeted (and since deleted) that this was all perfectly normal.

Yanov left for the private sector. And it is now a matter of public record that the California Charter Schools Association gives orders to Austin Beutner and Nick Melvoin.

Is this legal?

This expose is not finished. Kohlhaas has more.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization

Michael Kohlhaas Reveals More Secret L.A. Charter Emails: How a Grant of $325,000 from the Waltons Evaporated

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2019 //
20

Michael Kohlhaas is combing through the treasure trove of leaked emails about the inner world of the Los Angeles charter industry.

He recently posted about the short and strange debut of Ganas Academy.

It got a grant of $325,000 from the Walton Family Foundation. The founder proceeded to pay herself $13,000 a month, spent $63,000 on consultants, and another $15,000 on lawyers, and so on, and soon the money was all gone. But the school wasn’t ready to open, even though the founder was paying a recruiter a bonus of $850 to sign up students.

Kohlhaas writes:

I just got a small set of records from everybody’s favorite star-crossed charter school horror show, that is to say GANAS Academy. The set is woefully incomplete, and it’s pretty clear that Sakshi Jain is lying to her lawyer about it yet again, but nevertheless there is some essential material in there, and you can browse through the whole pile of it over here on Archive.Org.

And by far the most important material in here is GANAS Academy’s general ledger in MS Excel format1 along with monthly bank statements through June 2019. The ledger shows every credit and every debit from the inception of the school in August 2018 with very detailed descriptions. The story kicks off with a $325K grant from the Walton Family Foundation, deposited in the California Credit Union on August 11, 2018 as shown on that month’s bank statement and it’s all downhill from there.

In September 2018 she began paying herself $13K per month, as shown in that month’s statement and this continued at least through June 2019, which is the last monthly statement I have.2 But like I said, the real action is found in that ledger. It’s there that we learn that the $325K Jain has been burning through came from the Waltons. That she spent about $63K on recruiting students, which no doubt includes the $850 per kid bounty she paid her recruiter. And last but never least $15K to charter school contract killer law firm Young, Minney, and Corr.3

So that, friends, is the charter school innovation laboratory model. Get a ton of free money from an appalling gang of zillionaires and proceed to burn through it at an astonishing rate. A quarter of a million dollars between August 2018 and June 2019.4 And at the end, you don’t even have a damn school. Although I will say that given the horrific nature of these schools, the world is clearly better off having her spend all that money and not start a school than otherwise.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Glenn Sacks: The Secret of the “Success” of Charter Schools and Magnet Schools

By dianeravitch
August 29, 2019 //
22

Glenn Sacks is a teacher in Los Angeles and co-chair of the UTLA at James Monroe High School. The title of the article is “Charter Schools’ Success Is an Illusion.” The following article appeared in the Wall Street Journal. This is remarkable because the WSJ is relentlessly pro-charter, pro-voucher, anti-union, and anti-public school. It publishes article after article celebrating the successes of school choice. For it to open its pages to a teacher critical of charters is amazing. Thanks to the relentless Sara Stevenson, former librarian at the O. Henry Middle School in Austin for bringing this article to my attention. Congratulations, Glenn Sacks!

I teach at James Monroe High, a public school in the Los Angeles Unified School District. More than 80% of my students passed the 2019 Advanced Placement U.S. Government and Politics exam. This far exceeds the national (55%) and California average (52%). All my students are minorities, most are low-income, and few of their parents are educated. Almost all come from immigrant families, some here illegally.

I’m proud of them. Their success is my success. But my success is an illusion.

The reason my scores are higher this year is because I moved from Monroe’s residential school—a traditional public school—to its magnet school. I didn’t get better; the academic ability of my cohort of students got better. Research shows that throughout the district magnet students’ performance was better than those at other types of schools, and better than the state average.

Our magnet accepts everybody, as any public school does, but its students outperform residential students in practically all areas, including standardized tests, participation in extracurricular activities, and college admissions and scholarships. What separates them from the residential school’s students is self-selection—they applied to a magnet.

Yet that’s a big difference. The pursuit of a school of choice is evidence of a student’s and a family’s commitment to education. Parents understand how important this is. A recent study of New York City’s public high-school system found parents were more concerned about the quality of a school’s students than the quality of the school itself.

The selection effect that makes me appear more successful than I am also makes charter schools appear more successful than they are. Charter proponents’ claims that they “outperform” traditional public schools are based almost entirely on their test scores and college admissions rates.

Each spring, pro-charter websites are filled with standardized-test-score and college-acceptance hype, contrasting charters’ “success” with traditional public schools’ scores and rates, as if they were competing on a level playing field. KIPP, the largest nonprofit charter network in the country, boasts: “Our alumni enroll in college at rates above the national average. They graduate from college . . . at three times the rate of their peers from similar socioeconomic backgrounds.”

Some charter advocates acknowledge the selection effect. “There’s a level of institutional hypocrisy here,” Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute said in 2013. “Charter advocates say, ‘No, no, no, we don’t believe in [selective admissions],’ but when you see a successful charter school, it’s filled with families who are a good fit and who want to be there, and that’s not possible when you have a random assortment of kids.”

Gordon Lafer of the University of Oregon, who conducted an extensive study of charter schools, found that charters also benefit because they “exercise recruitment, admission, and expulsion policies that often screen out the students who would be the neediest and most expensive to serve—who then turn to district schools.” An American Civil Liberties Union study of California charters and a nationwide Reuters investigation found widespread admission policies helping charters to exclude low-performing students.

Charter skimming is apparent in the public school classroom. Each year in the residential school, I lost a few students because they had been accepted to charters. Almost all of them were top-tier students.

At the same time, we received students midyear who struggled in charters and were bounced back to public schools. Yet students who flunk out of a public school midyear rarely can go to a charter school. If a charter decides to replace a student at all, it will be with someone from its waiting list.

I don’t blame charter parents for wanting to do what they feel is best for their children. And I’m sure many charter advocates mean well. Every teacher has daydreamed about having classes filled with motivated, high-performing students. Charters are that daydream come to life.

If charters aren’t the solution, what is? Our schools are understaffed and underfunded, and teachers are stretched very thin. We could do much more for our students if we had sufficient support staff and smaller classes.

Moreover, funding issues have cost schools many programs that were successful in connecting with students who were otherwise disinterested and disengaged. My principal wistfully recounts them, including an airline-mechanics program we had with the local airport, where our students repaired actual aircraft and trained to become airline mechanics. Teachers who run surviving programs are always in a struggle for funding.

The real solution to America’s educational problems lies not in expanding charters or other educational fads, but in properly supporting the schools we already have.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Privatization

Los Angeles: Controversial Charter Leader Takes Over Low-Performing “Learn4Life” Centers

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2019 //
3

Caprice Young is a star of the charter industry in California. She was a member and president of the board of the Los Angeles Unified School District. She was founder of the California Charter Schools Association, the well-heeled lobbyists for the private charter sector, which fights off accountability and transparency with the help of billionaires like Reed Hastings and Eli Broad. She is a graduate of the unaccredited Broad Academy. She led an embattled chain of Gulen charter schools in Los Angeles called Magnolia.

And now she will serve as superintendent of California’s floundering “Learn4Life” Centers.

The press release from Learn4Life says the chain enrolls 20,000 students in California, Ohio, and Michigan, but the Broad Center says it enrolls 40,000, in those states.

The Learn4Life charter schools are basically operated in malls and storefronts. Students drop in once a week to pick up their assignments. The schools collect huge sums from the state for low-quality “education,” if you can call it “education.”

Investigative reporter Will Huntsberry of the Voice of San Diego has written a series of blistering exposes of Learn4Life. See here and here and here.

Carol Burris wrote about the “Learn4Life” Centers in her report called Charters and Consequences.

Bryan Juan was falling behind in high school credits. Desperate to graduate on time, he left his public high school and enrolled in Desert Sands Charter High School. “I started off ok,” he said. “But even though I went almost every day and worked hard, I could not catch up and do all the paper packets—especially on my own. I got discouraged. I left and went back to my public school.”

Bryan was not alone in his failure at Desert Sands. The 2015 four-year graduation rate of the charter was a dismal 11.5%. Even worse, over 42% of the students who should have graduated that year dropped out of school altogether.

Desert Sands Charter High School enrolls nearly 2000 students; almost all are Latino. It is part of the Antelope Valley School District, but you will not find it listed on Antelope’s website. Nor will you find Desert Sands at the Lancaster, California address given on its own website. Bryan’s classroom was located in an office building across from a Walmart, nearly 100 miles away from both Antelope Valley Schools and the Desert Sand’s address.

Desert Sands is one of 15 independent learning center charter schools, which are defined as non-classroom based independent study sites, connected to Learn4Life, a network of schools that claim to provide personalized learning. On its website, Learn4Life tells prospective families that it connects students to resource centers so that they can receive one on one instruction because “no two students are alike.”

Bryan’s classmates, Mayra and Edith, who also returned to the public school from Desert Sands, found their experience at the charter to be anything but “personalized.” They described education at Desert Sands as no more than a continuous cycle of paper packets, optional tutor appointments and tests that students continue to take until they pass.

Three calls to three different Learn4Life charter schools confirmed that the instructional program was driven by paper-packets that students pick up and complete. After packet completion, students take a test to earn credit. Although students can make an appointment for help with the packet, they are required to come by only once a week.

Of the 15 charters authorized to Learn4Life operated corporations, 13 are required to operate high-school grade levels. Each school has its own name, principal
and sponsoring district, but uniqueness ends there. The schools are in reality a web of resource centers sprinkled in office buildings, strip malls and even former liquor stores. They advertise themselves with nearly identical websites with the same pictures, quotes, descriptions of program, principal letters and a common phone number andaddress. The homepage of the Desert Sands High School is indistinguishable from the homepage of Diego Valley, as well as the homepages of 11 other high schools that are part of the chain. All that differs is the name of the school.

Diego Plus is one of the many corporations operated by Learn4Life. Diego Plus and its three Learn4 Life charter schools (Diego Valley, Diego Hills and Diego Springs), are defendants in a lawsuit filed by Grossmont Union High School District, San Diego Unified School District, and Sweetwater Union High School District. The three charters opened their resource centers in the three complaining districts without notifying them. They were authorized by and are the responsibility of the Julian, Dehesa and Borrego Springs school districts, each of which receives considerable income for supervising these charters located far beyond their boundaries.

In total, the three Learn4Life Diego Plus charters enroll almost 2000 students. Their respective four-year 2015 graduation rates are 10.8%, 19.3%, and 0%. 45% of the students in that Diego Valley cohort dropped out of the charter school. It does not appear that long distance supervision of storefront schools is working out well for kids.

Transparency and accountability, as well as legal efforts to force legal compliance, have been stymied and complicated by the continual changes in Learn4Life corporate names and addresses. A recent petition to the court on behalf of the Grossmont Union High School District lists 13 corporate names located at the same Learn4Life address. In 2014, there were no less than eight not-for-profit corporations listed at that Lancaster address that filed tax returns.

Each of those eight corporations received funding from the state of California. During the 2013-14 school year, the sum of all government grants given to those eight related corporations was a whopping $61,476,306. About 11,000 students are enrolled in the 15 Learn4Life schools.

Officers of the Learn4Life corporations play musical chairs with titles, often receiving compensation from several different corporations. For example, Steve Gocke is listed as the Superintendent of Desert Sands Charter. In 2014, Gocke received $139,750 for serving as the secretary for the two different Learn4Life charter schools. Dante Simi served as the CEO of six different Learn4Life related corporations, and the CFO of two others. According to the organizations’ 990s, his
2014 compensation was $270,200. Dante’s son-in-law, Skip Hansen, serves as a Senior Vice President, and received a six- figure salary for his services. Simi’s wife Linda is also listed as a key employee of one of the corporations.

Perhaps all of the above attempts at obfuscation might be forgiven if the schools were actually getting the job done. But they are not. The average 2015 graduation rate for the schools was 13.73%. Two of the schools had graduation rates of 0%. Dropout rates for cohorts ranged from 27.6% to 53.9%.

Are these alarming rates solely a result of serving at-risk students? Although Learn4Life advertises that its mission is to serve students who dropped out or are at risk of dropping out, its schools take students as early as ninth-grade, including those who simply want a quick and easy way to graduate early. There is no requirement for prior failure before entering the schools.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Gulen Charter Schools, Los Angeles, Privatization

California: Schools Tied to Massive Online Charter Scandal Are Closing

By dianeravitch
August 27, 2019 //
7

Will Huntsberry of the Voice of San Diego reports that all the online charters connected to the biggest charter fraud in U.S. history will close.

Huntsberry writes:

An online charter school empire whose leaders have been charged with enrolling fake students and misappropriating $80 million in public funds will be forced to close all of its schools across California.

In May, the San Diego district attorney’s office charged 11 people in a corruption scandal of historic proportions. Prosecutors say Sean McManus and Jason Schrock, who operated A3 Education, were the ringleaders of the operation. Several who worked with McManus and Schrock have also been charged with crimes, including the superintendent of the Dehesa School District in San Diego County.

At its peak, A3 operated 19 online schools across the state, including three in San Diego, according to investigators. One closed before the charges were filed. And two more – one in San Diego and another in Los Angeles – were slated to close. But now a court-appointed receiver has decided to shutter all of the remaining schools.

Students’ records at each of the closing schools will be transferred to their school district of residence by Sept. 30, according to a letter obtained by the Marin Independent Journal, which was sent out to districts associated with the A3 schools. Richard Kipperman, the court-appointed receiver, confirmed to Voice of San Diego that all the schools will close.

How the Scam Worked

Prosecutors painted an intricate picture of a complex organization that managed to turn student records into giant sums of cash. A3 Education enrolled many students who took actual classes, but it also enrolled many students who never did any schoolwork, prosecutors say.

Most of the fake students were participants in summer athletic programs, according to the indictment. Enrollment workers would approach a football program, for instance, and offer as little as $25 a head for each player’s records. The enrollment worker would also get a commission on however many students he or she enrolled. The rest of the money – which totaled in the thousands of dollars for each student – went to companies controlled by McManus and Schrock.

In one instance, Luiz Rigney, an enrollment worker, carried several suitcases of student paperwork, worth roughly $5 million, to one of A3’s offices. Rigney had been asked to backdate that paperwork so A3 could get maximum profit, prosecutors say.

In another instance, two workers texted each other back and forth about the large sums of cash flowing through the company: “I had the weirdest dream last night! One was about us growing all Sean’s schools. I was running all the Facebook campaigns and you were running around my office drinking champagne throwing money everywhere yelling I love bonuses,” the texts read, according to court documents.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Los Angeles, Privatization, San Diego, School Choice, Virtual Charter Schools

Carl J. Petersen: Watch Nick Melvoin Give Away Public Facilities to the Charter Industry

By dianeravitch
August 26, 2019 //
13

Carl J.Petersen describes the machinations of Nick Melvoin, a school board member who was put into office by the money of the charter school lobby.

As blogger Michael Kohlhaas has demonstrated by publishing leaked emails between Melvoin and leaders of the California Charter School Association, Melvoin is looking out for the interests of his sponsors.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization
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