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Happy 10-Year Blogday, Mercedes Schneider!!!

By dianeravitch
January 26, 2023 //
21

Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of Mercedes Schneider’s wonderful blog!

I learned about it last night, too late to mark the actual blog birthday.

Mercedes is one of the sharpest, smartest voices of the Resistance to privatization. She is a hero of the Resistance thanks to her incisive, brilliant exposés of “reform” hoaxes.

She is a high school English teacher in Louisiana. She has a Ph.D. in statistics and research methodology. She could have been a professor but she wanted to teach high school students.

I started my blog in April 2012; she started hers in January 2013. We exchanged emails, and we met when I came to speak in Louisiana. We became fast friends. Mercedes has been a regular at annual conferences of the Network for Public Education, where she most recently gave lessons on how to obtain tax forms and other public data about “reform” groups, which sprout like weeds, with new names, lots of money, and the same set of actors.

Mercedes is relentless. While teaching and blogging, she wrote four books over the past decade.

In 2014, her first book was A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who in the Implosion of Public Education, a vivid portrayal of the cast of characters who pursued privatization and teacher-bashing while calling themselves “reformers.” Might as well have called themselves “destroyers,” because that’s what they are.

In 2015, she published Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools?, with a foreword by Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education.

In 2016, she published School Choice: The End of Public Education?, with a foreword by Karen Lewis, the late and much-loved President of the Chicago Teachers Union.

In 2020, she gathered her advice about research and published A Practical Guide to Digital Research: Getting the Facts and Rejecting the Lies.

In her blogday post, she reflected on some positive developments in the past decade

Of course, the fight continues, but allow me to celebrate a few realities:

  • Bobby Jindal is no longer governor of Louisiana, and his 2016 presidential ambitions were a flop.
  • John White is no longer Louisiana state superintendent. In fact, he is not a superintendent anywhere at all.
  • Michelle Rhee is no longer DC school chancellor. She, too, is chancellor of nowhere at all.
  • Hanna Skandera is no longer NM school chief. She, too, is school chief of nowhere at all.
  • Joel Klein holds no sway over NYC schools. Chief of nowhere.
  • Teach for America (TFA) is losing its luster. Though it tries to reinvent itself, the bottom line is that the org depends upon class after class of willing recruits– a well that appears to be hitting bottom.

Yes, the fight continues. But today– today I take a moment to celebrate just a wee bit.

Happy Blogday to me.

I celebrate Mercedes too and happily name her to the honor roll of this blog.

Love you, Mercedes! May you keep on making a difference.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), Honor Roll, Jindal, Bobby, Louisiana, New Mexico, New Orleans, Resistance, Rhee, Michelle, Support for public schools, Teach for America, Vouchers

New Mexico: What One Determined Member of Congress Accomplished

By dianeravitch
December 31, 2022 //
5

Melanie Stansbury was elected to Congress in New Mexico to fill the seat of Deb Haaland after she was named Secretary of the Interior. Stansbury had one audacious goal: she wanted the federal government to fund the construction of a new school for a tribal school in her district.

Jennifer bender of Huffington Post explains the saga of one Congresswoman’s quest to keep her promise:

WASHINGTON — Buried in the 4,155-page omnibus spending bill unveiled in the Senate on Tuesday is a single sentence that’s likely to go unnoticed by almost everyone — except the first-term congresswoman who fought for it with everything she had for the last year and a half.

“For an additional amount for ‘Education Construction,’ $90,465,000, to remain available until expended for necessary expenses related to the consequences of flooding at the To’Hajiilee Community School.”

It’s the only line item in the bill under a section titled “Bureau of Indian Education, Education Construction.” It’s money to rebuild a K-12 school in TóHajiilee, New Mexico, a remote community about 35 miles west of Albuquerque.

This school was built on a floodplain. For decades, walls of water have poured down from a nearby canyon and drowned the campus. School officials here routinely pull children from their classes and race to get them onto a bus to shuttle them to safety. Teachers scramble to move their cars to higher ground before they get washed away.

The constant flash floods have left the buildings in appalling disrepair. In March, the high school was abruptly vacated and shut down because it was literally sinking into mud, and its foundation was crumbling. The walls had visible cracks. Water poured through the roof every time it rained. There was nowhere else for the high school students to go, so they went home, where their teachers, somehow, carried on teaching virtual classes that previously involved hands-on work in chemistry labs, culinary arts classes and in woodworking classrooms.

The To’Hajiilee Community School has been neglected and massively underfunded since its founding. It’s one of 183 K-12 schools overseen by the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE), responsible for providing education to more than 48,000 Native American children around the country. Of these schools, 86 are in “poor condition,” and 73 don’t have the money for needed repairs, according to BIE data from 2021. An additional 41 of these schools are in “fair condition.”

The school isn’t just substandard; it’s a site that carries historical trauma. Like many of today’s BIE schools, the To’Hajiilee Community School is also a former Indian boarding school. For about 150 years, the U.S. government forced tens of thousands of Indigenous children to attend these schools to try to assimilate them into white culture. As a result, these kids endured physical, psychological and sexual abuse. Some died. Others disappeared.

Despite having such few resources, the To’Hajiilee Community School has still managed to thrive culturally, said Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.), who represents this district. School officials have reclaimed the space and built a strong community around it, grounding its activities in Indigenous language and cultural revitalization.

Stansbury has made it her number-one priority to find money for the school ever since she won a special election in June 2021 to fill the House seat vacated by now-Interior Secretary Deb Haaland. And if anyone knows how the congressional appropriations process works, it’s Stansbury.

The lawmaker previously worked on BIE’s budget at the Office of Management and Budget and was a staffer on the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. For the last 18 months, Stansbury has been aggressively, if desperately, lobbying anyone who has a say in tribal school funding — House appropriators, congressional leadership, White House officials, Interior Department officials — to fund the To’Hajiilee Community School adequately.

Over the past few weeks, as lawmakers scrambled to get their priorities into the $1.7 trillion year-end spending bill, Stansbury says she spent “every day, all day long,” dogging House and Senate appropriators, Hill leaders and administration officials to include money for the school. She didn’t know until Tuesday morning, when the bill was publicly released and she pored over its text, that her efforts had paid off.

“We’ve been working so hard on this, for so long, I literally woke up … and bawled my eyes out,” Stansbury told HuffPost in an emotional interview on Tuesday. “I invested everything I had to get funding for this school. The To’Hajiilee community is only a short distance from Albuquerque, but the people out there have so much need, and the community hasn’t had its needs and priorities met. It’s just so huge for this community.”

Good work, Cong. Stansbury. I’m pleased to add you to the honor roll of this blog at the urging of a member of our blog community.

Categories Funding, Honor Roll, New Mexico

Good News! New Mexico Will Provide Free Childcare for Most Families

By dianeravitch
December 6, 2022 //
8

In an impressive achievement for families and children, New Mexico passed an amendment to its state constitution guaranteeing free childcare to families that need it most. New Mexico is one of the poorest states in the nation. Free childcare will enable mothers to work to support their children. Unlike “reform” programs that emphasize standardized testing, New Mexico’s pioneering emphasis on child wellbeing really does put children first.

New Mexico in May became the first state to offer free child care to most of its residents. Now, after a November referendum, it’s also the first state to enshrine child care funding in its constitution, effectively making the service a universal right – and perhaps offering a model for how other states could serve their youngest residents and working parents.

Nationwide, the average cost of child care for families outpaced the rate of inflation in 2021, according to analysis from Child Care Aware of America. A low-income family should have to spend only 7% of its income on child care, per a federal benchmark based on an average of census data. But the national average cost of child care – $10,600 annually – is roughly 10% of a married-couple family’s average annual income and 35% of a single parent’s income, the analysis found…

The scheme – hatched by a willing governor, state lawmakers and determined child advocates – effectively makes child care free to families making up to 400% of the federal poverty level, or about $111,000 for a family of four. The state’s median household income is $51,243.

At its core, the program aims to provide a safe environment for children at a stage of critical brain growth and development. Further, saving caregivers money on child care lets them invest more in their families, from putting healthy food on the table to home ownership, a key official said….

More than 70% of state voters approved the proposition, which will be funded by oil and gas revenues.

There has been a strong will in New Mexico to improve its slice of the widely broken US child care system, mainly because it is one of the poorest states and consistently ranks among the worst for child well-being, state officials and child advocates say.

Child advocates some 12 years ago sparked the movement to get a permanent funding source for child care enshrined in the state’s constitution. It was a long-game strategy for a coalition of non-profit, grassroots groups, including New Mexico Voices For Children.

That organization in 2010 first brainstormed using funds from oil and gas production revenue to fund child care and early education, said Amber Wallin, its executive director….

Under Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, New Mexico has established a minimum wage for child care workers: Entry-level employees now earn $15 dollars an hour, and more experienced lead teachers earn $20 dollars an hour. The pay raises aim to help improve workforce retention; before the raises, workers could earn a higher wage working at a fast-food restaurant than providing child care, child advocates told CNN.

New Mexico also created the first state agency and cabinet post focused on early childhood education and care. Also, “we were the first state to set our cost of what we reimburse child providers for child care at the actual cost of delivering care, and we were the first state to make child care free for most families,” said Elizabeth Groginsky, the state’s first secretary for early childhood education.

Categories Childhood, Courage, Creativity, Economy, Education Reform, New Mexico, Parents

Jan Resseger: The Best Post-Pandemic Strategy May Be Community Schools

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2020 //
24

Jan Resseger explains here why community schools may be the best post-pandemic strategy for reopening schools.

Jeff Bryant recently profiled Mary Parr-Sanchez, the current president of the National Education Association’s New Mexico affiliate, speaking about what education will be like after the pandemic: “‘I think we’re all going to be different after this… When I first learned of the community schools model, it hit me like a lightning bolt,’ she told me. ‘I loved it because it focused on the academic and nonacademic needs of children, and the focus was on learning and a culturally relevant curriculum, not just test scores.’ Now, she is convinced the community schools model is the most promising way forward for schools as they reopen to the new realities of recovering from the fallout of COVID-19.”

Here is how the New York City Children’s Aid Society’s National Center for Community Schools defines a full-service, wraparound community school: “The foundations for community schools can be conceptualized as a Developmental Triangle that places children at the center, surrounded by families and communities. Because students’ educational success, health and well-being are the focus of every community school, the legs of the triangle consist of three interconnected support systems: A strong core instructional program… expanded learning opportunities… and a full range of health, mental health and social services designed to promote children’s well-being and remove barriers to learning.”

Community schools are designed locally to meet the needs of the particular school community, but they share essential characteristics. The Children’s Aid Society explains that community schools are not mere ad hoc school community partnerships, but are instead the product of careful planning and staffing. A Community School Director—an administrator—partners with the principal to coordinate the social, medical and enrichment services housed in the community school with the academic program. Each community school has a designated lead partner agency, which “maintains a full-time presence in the school and engages in regular joint planning with the Community School Director, the staff, and the community.”

The goal is to meet all the needs of children, not just their academic needs.

Categories Creativity, Education Reform, New Mexico

Jeff Bryant: The Future of the School Is Not Online. It’s in New Mexico.

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2020 //
17

Jeff Bryant writes here about promising developments in New Mexico. where educators are reimagine the future of schools.

Not many people would think of New Mexico as an educational paradigm. Its test scores and very low, and it’s child poverty rate is very high. It endured eight years of a Republican Governor who believed in Je Bush’s ideology of high-stakes testing, test-based evaluation of teachers, and choice. That model produced no improvement, but quite a lot of teacher alienation.

Bryant interviewed the state president of the NEA,who filled him in on the union’s dreams for the future.


“I think we’re all going to be different after this,” Mary Parr-Sanchez told me in a phone call, “but I don’t know how.” Parr-Sanchez is the current president of NEA-New Mexico, the National Education Association’s affiliate in the Land of Enchantment, and “this” of course is the profound trauma of schooling amidst COVID-19…

Our current governor [Michelle Lujan Grisham] is showing impressive leadership, but our previous governor of eight years drove education into the ground,” she said, referring to former Governor Susana Martinez, whose administration’s response to the economic downturn during the Great Recession was to slash education spending, expand privately operated charter schools to compete for funding, and impose a punitive regime of evaluating teachers and schools based on high-stakes standardized testing.

Some of the heavy-handed evaluation systems Martinez championed have been repealed by Governor Lujan Grisham, but New Mexico still funds its schools less than it did in 2008.

Much of what Martinez imposed on New Mexico were pillars of education policy that started with No Child Left Behind legislation passed during the George W. Bush presidential administration and extended under the Barack Obama presidency.

“I loved being a teacher in the 1990s,” Parr-Sanchez recalled, “but since No Child Left Behind [which became law in 2002], all the joy was taken out of teaching. The test-and-punish program got us nowhere, and for the past 10 years, teachers have felt like they’ve been under assault.”

Despite these onerous policies, Parr-Sanchez saw the emergence of a different, more promising school model in her state.

“When I first learned of the community schools model, it hit me like a lightning bolt,” she told me. “I loved it because it focused on [the academic and non-academic needs of children], and the focus was on learning and a culturally relevant curriculum, not just test scores. The movement for community schools brought the joy of teaching back for me.”

Now, she is convinced the community schools model is the most promising way forward for schools as they reopen to the new realities of recovering from the fallout of COVID-19.

“In our state’s response to the pandemic, we’ve had to be very sensitive to issues of poverty, and the state has challenged districts to reach all children, including special education students and homeless students,” she explained. In this kind of emergency situation, she believes community schools have an advantage because “the model enables you to look at the whole child.” (A whole child approach considers more than just students’ academic outcomes to include attention to students’ health, mental, socioeconomic, and cultural conditions that often have more impact on students’ abilities to learn.)

“What happens during the school day is not enough to improve the trajectory of children until you deal with what is really going on in children’s lives. Are they hungry? Are they homeless? The testing agenda took us away from addressing this. Community schools can bring us back.”

Categories Education Reform, Health, New Mexico, Poverty, Safety

File This in the Department of “Some People Never Learn”

By dianeravitch
February 29, 2020 //
51

Say this for Eric Hanushek: He never gives up on his obsession with paying teachers more if their students get higher test scores. Arne Duncan built this concept into the requirements of his disastrous Race to the Top” program, which caused almost every state to adopt a teacher evaluation plan in which student test scores played a significant role. Harvard economist Raj Chetty wtote a highly-publicized paper with two colleagues, claiming that one good teacher (who raised test scores in the early grades) would raise lifetime incomes (by about $5 a week), reduce pregnancies, and be a life-changer. President Obama cited Chetty in his 2012 State of the Union address, but efforts to turn the theory into reality fell flat. (Read more about this catastrophe in SLAYING GOLIATH.) In fact, every state that imposed value-added measurement learned that it discouraged teachers from teaching in high-needs schools, where their chance of getting a big test score gain was reduced. It did not produce any of the promised benefits.

But forget about reality! Let’s stand by the theory. Hanushek’s new venture at the conservative Hoover Institution is joined by Christopher Ruszkowski, who served as Commissioner of Education in New Mexico after the resignation of Hanna Skandera (who previously worked for the Hoover Institution, Jeb Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger). After eights years of “reform” leadership, New Mexico remained mired at the bottom of NAEP. The state had a harsh, test-based teacher evaluation plan, but the union fought it in court, it was enjoined by a judge, and the New Democratic Governor scrapped it as one of her first executive actions. New Mexico has one of the highest proportions of students living in poverty, but Republican state leaders ignored that inconvenient fact. After a decade of consistent failure, we can safely put test-based teacher evaluation into the category of a Zombie idea. Dead but still stalking the land.

 

Hoover_Centennial_Logo_RGB Match PMS 202 (red)_w 600

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:

Hoover Institution, Jeff Marschner, (202) 760-3200

NEWLY FORMED HOOVER EDUCATION SUCCESS INITIATIVE RELEASES PAPER ON TRANSFORMING TEACHER COMPENSATION

Four education policy papers to be released in 2020—addressing how states should consider transforming education in the decade ahead.

STANFORD, CA. (January 30th) – As state legislative sessions begin around the country, the Hoover Education Success Initiative (HESI), a new research program at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, has released “The Unavoidable: Tomorrow’s Teacher Compensation”—a policy briefing on the important connections between teacher compensation systems and student achievement outcomes. The research-based policy paper includes both a summary of findings and practical recommendations for policymakers.

The paper highlights often overlooked areas for attention including shifting overall compensation from retirement into salaries, ending the practice of paying for advanced degrees that do not yield changes in student outcomes, addressing teacher shortages in a targeted fashion instead of generally, and paying teachers more when they are effective in higher-need schools.  The paper concludes that teachers’ salaries should be significantly increased, but that students will not make achievement gains unless salaries are also linked to teacher quality.

“We need to pay teachers competitively, which we are not doing now,” said Dr. Eric Hanushek, author of the policy synthesis. “But just increasing compensation without recognizing teacher effectiveness is unlikely to lead to improved student outcomes. We should bundle together better pay with a serious recognition of just how important effective teachers are when it comes to influencing student achievement.”

“While we have spent much of the last year reviewing and synthesizing the research, the next phase of our work turns to helping states implement the policy ideas,” said Christopher N. Ruszkowski, executive director of HESI. “There is overwhelming evidence that nothing matters more than teacher quality, and state legislatures and governors should take strong action. Neglecting this responsibility causes harm to our students that may not be immediately visible today but will certainly be reflected in our students’ lives and in our economy tomorrow.  It’s a tough issue and it may feel like something we can avoid, but it will catch up with us.”

Click here to read the policy analysis brief.

About the Hoover Education Success Initiative

With passage in 2015 of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), states are again in charge of American education policy. To support them in this undertaking, the Hoover Education Success Initiative (HESI), launched in 2019, seeks to provide state education leaders with policy recommendations that are based upon sound research and analysis.  HESI hosts workshops and policy symposia on high-impact areas related to the improvement and reinvention of the US education system. The findings and recommendations in each area are outlined in concise topical papers.

The leadership team at HESI engages with its Practitioner Council, formed of national policy leaders, and with interested state government leaders. HESI’s ultimate goal is to spark innovation and contribute to the ongoing transformation of the nation’s K-12 education landscape, thus improving outcomes for our nation’s children.

###

Jeff Marschner
Director of Media Relations
Categories Failure, New Mexico, Standardized Testing, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers, VAM (value-added modeling)

New Mexico: New Democratic Governor Eliminates A-F School Grades

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2019 //
56

One of Jeb Bush’s signature initiatives–and possibly the stupidest–was giving schools letter grades of A-F.

Schools are complex institutions with many individuals engaged in their work, some doing better jobs than others, some essential, some not. No complex institution should be graded A-F. No individual child should be graded with a single letter, A-F. Imagine if your child came home with a report card that held only one letter, A-F. As a parent, you would be outraged. You would know that she was good at this, not so good at that, that there were many ways of describing her efforts and abilities and skills and work. How dumb it is to grade an entire school with a single letter.

Yet the Florida model of testing, accountability, choice, punishments, and rewards goes wherever there are rightwing zealots who want to destroy public education.

New Mexico had the misfortune of electing a Republican governor who wanted to be just like Jeb. She hired a non-educator, Hannah Skandera, as the state’s commissioner of education (Skandera had worked for Jeb), and she tried to import the Florida model. After seven years, Skandera left, and New Mexico saw zero improvement in education by any metric.

Fortunately Susana Martinez was replaced by a Democratic governor, former Congresswoman Michelle Lujan Grisham, who has been removing every trace of the Florida model. In January she eliminated the state’s disastrous teacher-evaluation system and the hated PARCC tests, which had been imposed by Martinez’s executive orders.

Yesterday, with the stroke of a pen, she repealed the state’s A-F grading system. The state’s Public Education Department must now devise a new accountability system to comply with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act. The bill now under consideration in the legislature calls for a “dashboard showing how each of the state’s public schools are faring in terms of graduation rates, student proficiency outcomes, reliance on federal Title I funds and the progress of English-language learners.”

Of course, this too appeals to the idea that parents are consumers, not citizens bound to work together for better public schools.

New Mexico has extremely high levels of child poverty, the second worst in the nation after Mississippi. Standards, accountability, and choice doesn’t cure that. It also ranks at the very bottom of NAEP, close to the other poor states. The Florida Model pretends that poverty doesn’t matter. Skandera’s failure proved that it does.

Here is the system that is being dropped:

The state currently grades schools on a complex range of measures, including graduation rates, student performance on standardized tests, student attendance and parental involvement in schools. Advocates believe these grades provide a clear picture of how schools are performing and encourage communities to help struggling schools. Critics say the formula is so confusing that the grades are of little use. They also complain that the system relies too much on standardized test scores.

Several years ago, a group of Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists said even they struggled to make sense of the complicated grading system.

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Common Core, Education Industry, Florida, New Mexico, Teacher Evaluations

New Mexico: Democratic Governor and Legislature Plan to Cap Charter School Growth

By dianeravitch
January 21, 2019 //
6

Under Republican Governor Martinez, New Mexico was generous to charter schools. The state commissioner for most of her two terms was Hannah Skandera, previously worked for Jeb Bush. Charters got more funding than public schools.

Since the election of Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham, the glory days ofprivatization are numbered.

The Democrats who control the legislature plan to cap charter growth and eliminate the funding that favors charters.

This is good news for the underfunded Public Schools, where the rate of poverty is nearly the lowest in the nation, close behind Mississippi.

Real Democrats support real public schools. Real Democrats don’t support privatization or any part of the DeVos agenda.

Categories Charter Schools, Democrats, Education Industry, New Mexico, Privatization

And Then There Were Almost None: New Mexico Abandons PARCC Tests

By dianeravitch
January 3, 2019 //
40

The newly elected Governor of New Mexico, Michelle Lujan Grisham, signed an executive order withdrawing from PARCC, the Common Core test funded by Arne Duncan in 2010 (PARCC and SBAC together got $360 Million in federal funding.)

“Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Wednesday ordered the state’s Public Education Department to immediately take the steps necessary to terminate New Mexico’s use of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers standardized test, commonly known as PARCC.

“Lujan Grisham, in an executive order, called on the department to immediately begin working with key stakeholders to identify and implement a more effective, more appropriate and less intrusive method for assessing school performance that is compliant with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act.

The development of this alternative approach, intended to deliver a sounder methodology for the rating and assessments of New Mexico schools, will include teachers, administrators, parents, students and recognized professionals and experts in the field of student assessments.”

Some 25 states signed up for PARCC. Very few remain. A judge in New Jersey just ruled it could not be used as a graduation requirement.

PARCC took pride in having the highest standards and failing the most students.

Slowly but surely, Common Core and the testing that went with it, which once claimed alliances with nearly all 50 states and DC, are disappearing.

Sad. Not really.

Categories Common Core, Education Reform, New Mexico, Testing

New Mexico: Virtual Charter School Collects $6 Million for Students No Longer Enrolled

By dianeravitch
December 14, 2018 //
13

Sweet deal, but not for taxpayers!

New Mexico will pay out $6 million to the New Mexico Connections Academy, a virtual charter school, for students who are no longer enrolled. Connections is owned by mega-publisher Pearson. The leader of the Connections chain was also the chair of the ALEC education committee, encouraging red states to buy their product, which they did. Jeb Bush is a huge promoter of digital learning and his organization is heavily funded by software and hardware corporations.

When will states wake up to the fact that virtual charter schools are a scam? Any online courses needed should be under the direction of the local school district, meeting its needs, providing content it cannot provide, with no profit involved. Drive the frauds out of the marketplace.

A charter school in New Mexico that teaches students remotely by phone and internet is receiving public funding for hundreds of students who no longer are enrolled, amid attempts by state education officials to close to the school.

New Mexico Connections Academy will receive about $6 million during the current school year for students who are no longer enrolled, according to an accountability report from the budget-writing New Mexico Legislative Finance Committee. State spending accounts for the majority of public school funding in New Mexico. The school said Wednesday that it was setting aside some of the excess funding for future years when state funding is likely to lag behind enrollment.

Enrollment at the online school for grades 4 through 12 fell from more than 1,800 to students to about 1,100 after state officials declined to renew the school’s charter earlier this year amid lagging student academic results. Connections Academy successfully appealed the decision as arbitrary in state district court, though an appeal by the Public Education Department is pending.

Connections Academy opened in the fall of 2013 and contracts with the for-profit education curriculum provider Connections Education that is owned by Pearson.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, New Mexico, Pearson, Privatization, Virtual Charter Schools
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