Archives for category: North Carolina

Lindsay Wagner tells the strange story of crime without punishment in North Carolina, where the coach at a voucher school embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars, got a light sentence but kept his job. As Wagner points out, this would never happen in a public school; he would be fired and never hired by any other public school for a similar crime. What matters most: honesty or basketball?

When a coach at one of Fayetteville’s top private school basketball programs—a school that also happens to be the state’s top recipient of private school vouchers—pleaded guilty last summer in a Wake County courthouse to embezzling hundreds of thousands of tax withholding dollars he collected over eight years from the school’s employees, he received what some might consider an odd sentence.

Among the punishments handed down by the court for Heath Vandevender’s embezzlement activity at Trinity Christian School was 90 days in jail. He’s completing that sentence this fall by spending his weekends at the Cumberland County Detention Center.

But the sentence also allowed Vandevender to keep his job, despite having embezzled significant sums of money while employed by Trinity Christian—a school that has received more than $1.7 million in publicly-funded vouchers since 2014.
In between his weekend stints in jail, county and school officials say Vandevender continues coaching basketball and teaching journalism to high school students at Trinity Christian during the week.

It’s not the kind of thing that would typically happen at a public school.

“As a practical matter, we think it highly unlikely we would continue to employ this person given these facts unless there was something extraordinary going on,” said Ruben Reyes, the Associate Superintendent of Human Resources for Cumberland County Schools.

There are a couple of things that are extraordinary about Trinity Christian.

It’s the state’s number one recipient of private school vouchers—and it’s got one of the most competitive private school basketball programs in the state of North Carolina.

But that’s not all. North Carolina law allows voucher schools to hire convicted felons.

While Trinity Christian has risen to the top of the pack for producing elite basketball players, it’s not the only “top” distinction the school possesses. It’s also the state’s top recipient of private school vouchers (known formally as the Opportunity Scholarship Program), taking in more than $1.7 million in public funds since 2014 to subsidize tuition for low-income students, according to public records.

Despite the fact that the publicly-funded school’s coach and high school journalism teacher is now a convicted felon, that hasn’t stopped him from continuing to work at the school in between stints in jail—or stopped the school from receiving public funds.

That’s because there is nothing in the school voucher law or associated regulations that would prevent a school receiving funds from the Opportunity Scholarship Program from employing someone who has been convicted of a felony. Only the head of the school is required to undergo and submit to the state a criminal background check, explained Kathryn Marker, a representative with the North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority (NCSEAA), the agency tasked with overseeing the state’s school voucher program.

North Carolina is one of the states where the legislature has been working overtime to pass programs to harm public schools. Charters, vouchers, cybercharters, Teach for America, and regular assaults on the teaching profession.

That context makes it especially surprising and gratifying to see that the editorial board of the News-Observer wrote a strong critique of the GOP Tax Plan because it hurts public education.

This is a fantastic editorial:

There’s no doubt that tax-cut proposals in the House and Senate will increase income inequality today, but provisions in the bills could also weaken the earning power of many in the future by eroding the quality and the diversity of public schools.

One change that as approved by the Senate and also found in the House bill extends a tax benefit for college savings accounts to cover tuition for private elementary and secondary education. The change means that those who can afford to save money for non-public school tuition will be able to see that money grow tax-free.

Extending the tax break won’t mean much for families of modest incomes since they can’t afford to save large amounts for pre-college schooling, but it will have the effect of making high-priced private schools less costly to the wealthy. The Senate version of the change offered by Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas even allows those who home school to draw up to $10,000 annually out of the tax-favored accounts to cover loosely defined school expenses. In the end, the change reduces tax revenue to give the wealthy a break on private education costs.

This relatively narrow adjustment will be joined by sweeping proposals in both the House and Senate tax bills that limit federal deductions for state and local taxes. Those changes will make it harder for local and state governments to raise taxes to support public schools. Together, the changes will lighten the tuition bill at private schools while adding to the tax burden that supports public schools.

Of course, higher education is also threatened by provisions in the tax plans that would include levies on endowments and on tuition benefits provided to graduate students and children of college employees. But the plans’ broader threats are to public schools, which are already being undermined by Republican-backed efforts to increase the number of charter schools – publicly funded but privately run – and to expand the use of tax funds for private schools through voucher programs. Now that “school choice” movement has gained support at the federal level with the appointment of Betsy DeVos – a charter and private school advocate – as the U.S. education secretary.

Fueling re-segregation

As Republicans cut away at the financial foundation of public schools they are also accelerating the re-segregation of all schools at the elementary and secondary levels. Adding charters and using tax dollars to subsidize private and sectarian school tuition is leading to a great sorting by race. And that, rather than enhancing education, deprives children of learning through exposure to classmates of different racial groups and economic backgrounds.

In a recent report on charter schools, The Associated Press found the number of charter schools has tripled over the last decade and racial isolation has grown with them. Charters tend to be overwhelmingly white, or overwhelming one minority. The AP reported: “While 4 percent of traditional public schools are 99 percent minority, the figure is 17 percent for charters. In cities, where most charters are located, 25 percent of charters are over 99 percent nonwhite, compared to 10 percent for traditional schools.”

The trend worries even some charter school advocates. Pascual Rodriguez, principal of a Milwaukee charter where nearly all the students are Hispanic, told the AP: “The beauty of our school is we’re 97 percent Latino. The drawback is we’re 97 percent Latino … Well, what happens when they go off into the real world where you may be part of an institution that’s not 97 percent Latino?”

The AP report mirrors what an October News & Observer report found about racial segregation in North Carolina charter schools. The report found that the schools are more segregated and have more affluent students than traditional public schools.

Christine Kushner, a member of the Wake County Board of Education and a former chair of the panel, said that despite efforts to foster diversity in the Wake County school system, the state’s largest, minorities are the majority, largely because of an increase in Hispanic students and more white students enrolling in schools outside of the system. She said Wake schools remain strong, but their reduced diversity both in race and income is a setback.

“It’s troubling to me that we are going backward because I think diverse schools are what’s best for all children and economics and history affirm that,” she said. School choice is fine, she said, but public schools need to have the resources “to be the first choice for all parents.”

Good public schools and strong support through taxes are inseparable. But the tax bills in Congress are adding to the forces that are splitting that bond and jeopardizing public education.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/editorials/article188972429.html#storylink=cpy

North Carolina decided to copy Tennessee’s failed “Achievement School District” by creating a special district to take over low-scoring schools, giving them to charter operators, and claiming victory. Despite the abysmal failure in Tennessee, North Carolina created an “Innovative School District” and identified 48 Low-scoring prospects. One by one, they got off the state takeover list, after protests by parents and local boards. Finally, only one was left, and its school Board decided to close the school rather than let it go into the takeover District.

“Without a school to take over, ISD Superintendent Eric Hall says the district may have to pick up additional schools when they take up the matter next year. Leaders were expected to choose two schools this year and another two next fall, but this month’s developments are likely to shift that timetable.”

A letter to the editor following the article:

“Learn as they proceed….”??? Really?? The ISD Superintendent will make more than the governor of NC to oversee only ONE school?? A school that would actually be run by a for-profit charter company?? And he says they only chose one this year to learn as they go?? If they don’t ALREADY know what they are doing, how do they expect to turn around a “failing school”?? What a bunch of goobers… #WAKEUPNC!! #PUBLICservants??!!
“Hall described the program’s slow roll-out as an opportunity for North Carolina officials to learn as they proceed with the new district.”

Another big victory for reform.

The North Carolina State Board of Education unanimously approved the opening of a for-profit charter school that will enroll more than 2,000 students in Cary. The school will be operated by Charter Schools, USA, a Florida corporation owned by Jonathan Hage, a friend of Jeb Bush. Not an educator, Hage has built a very large business by owning for-profit charters.

The State Board of Education unanimously approved Cardinal Charter Academy West Campus, which plans to educate up to 2,180 students in kindergarten through 12th grade. The new school, modeled after the existing Cardinal Charter Academy in Cary, represents the latest effort by charter school operators to target the fast-growing western Wake County area…

Critics say charter schools are targeting the more-affluent families who live in western Wake, where test scores are higher and the percentage of low-income students is lower than the Wake County school district average. Charters are taxpayer-funded public schools that are exempt from some of the regulations that traditional public schools must follow.

But supporters say they’re meeting the need for school choice, citing the long waiting lists for Cardinal Charter and packed parent information sessions.

Cardinal Charter West would be managed by Charter Schools USA, a Florida-based for-profit company that could receive more than $2 million a year from the new school.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article182268141.html#storylink=cpy

At the same meeting of the state board, a charter school in rural Bertie County was closed because of its low enrollment and poor academic standing.

North Carolina is undeterred by the abject failure of Tennessee’s “Achievement School District,” which turned control of low-performing schools to charter operators. North Carolina will try exactly the same strategy but will call it the “Opportunity School District.”

School board members are miffed that it is taking so long to select five schools for their experiment. Many likely takeover schools have fought back and resisted, with community support.

The state board is adopting a strategy that has no evidence that it works. It removes local control and gives public money to charter operators. Board member Olivia Holmes Oxendine is certain that what failed in Tennessee will succeed in North Carolina, even though Tennessee had many additional millions in Race to the Top funding.

Since when did conservatives become enemies of local control?

Can’t they come up with a better idea than to copy the plan that failed in Tennessee?

Laura Chapman writes:

This is the new “public policy.”

I see that the Oregon backers of Achievement For All Children in North Carolina paid state politicians for the right to substitute charter schools for low performing public schools in a new multi-count “Innovative School District.”

I looked at the website for the Achievement for All Children franchise (http://aac.school). I think the word franchise is correct because there is a one-size-fits all basic curriculum, with non-trivial online deliveryof content—a boon for cost cutting and really attractive to charters. What’s more, much of the curriculum is free or low cost, so reimbursements for managing schools and hiring paraprofessionals may well be where much of the public money goes.

I took some time to look at the curriculum, the partners, and the funders of this operation. North Carolina schools in this concocted “Innovative School District” will have tightly sequenced grade-by-grade lessons from a ready-to use curriculum. The curriculum has significant on-line components, and/or practice workbooks. These materials also offer teacher handholding materials–what to do, when, and how.

The main curriculum will be E. D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge® program with grade-by-grade mastery of content beginning in Kindergarten. This content is also organized to fit the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). In 2011, Hirsch endorsed the Common Core State Standards and changed the rhetoric of Core Knowledge® to accommodate the CCSS aims of college and career readiness. Substantial portions of the Core Knowledge program are now available on line and “aligned” with the CCSS.

The Hirsch’s Core Knowledge® program has tapped online services “for building Common Core-aligned reading and language arts skills.” One example is “Quill.”

Quill, is a two-tier service, one free, the other premium. The premium service requires a fee, but that fee can be waived for low-income schools. The Quill curriculum requires the application of grammar, writing and proofreading skills to Core Knowledge content (from Core Knowledge Language Arts® and Core Knowledge History and GeographyTM.). The online assignments, each about 10-15 minutes, are organized by the Common Core standards.

Quill gathers data on student performance in real time then steers each student into an improvement program. The premium program adds data gathering suitable for tracking progress on “national writing standards,” especially “sentence combining” for a logical presentation of ideas.

A second online program has been tapped for use in the Core Knowledge® program. It is free, and offered by ReadWorks.org. According to the ReadWorks website, the service offers “the largest, highest-quality library of curated nonfiction and literary articles in the country, along with reading comprehension and vocabulary lessons, formative assessments, and teacher guidance.”

ReadWorks is incorporating content from the Core Knowledge® program into their “Article-A-DayTM” feature—brief nonfiction texts intended to build students’ “background knowledge, vocabulary, and reading stamina.”
These ReadWorks services are paid for by private and corporate “partners” as well as the generosity of specific content providers.

Here are the private and corporate supporters of the content: Brooke Astor Fund for New York City Education; Frances L. & Edwin L. Cummings Memorial Fund; Cleveland H. Dodge Foundation; Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Imagine K12; Amherst Foundation; William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust; NewSchools Venture Fund; Smith Richardson Foundation; Spotlight Fund; Tsunami Foundation – Anson and Debra Beard, Jr. and Family; and Travelers. The “partners” with Imagine K12; are venture capitalists as are those with NewSchools Venture Fund.

Readworks also has partners who integrate their content into the ReadWorks on-line program, especially the “Article-A-DayTM” feature. These content providers include: The American Museum of Natural History; Museum of Modern Art, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History; New York Historical Society and Museum; Philadelphia Museum of Art; New York Philharmonic; Audubon; Exploratorium; The Wall Street Journal; New York City Ballet; Civil War trust; Learning Ally (for students with dyslexia and visual impairments) and Wordsmyth. (dictionary, thesaurus)

Imagine K12 is of special interest. This is an “investment accelerator” for startups in the tech industry. Educators are enlisted to test and help promote the products through the Imagine K-12 network. Participants in the network–tech-loving educators–are eligible for special invitations to Silicon Valley to be in on and test products/services from the latest tech startups.

Since 2011, Imagine k12 has launched more than 75 apps, online programs and services. Many of these de-school education, and remove educators from decisions in favor of algorithms. The website lists 18 apps, services, products for classroom management, 19 for curriculum, 11 for feedback and assessment, 17 for student learning, 15 for school operations, and 14 for postsecondary education. (These categories are not mutually exclusive).

I conclude that the Innovation School District will be a profit-centered operation with little school-level control of decisions by educators My guess is that parents will have marginal engagement of the school staff unless that is accomplished with the aid of a mobile app. There is no doubt about this: The students will be sources of massive amounts of data for exploitation by venture capitalists.

The legislature of North Carolina created a special district to seize control of low-performing schools and turn them over to private charter operators. The district was to be called the North Carolina Innovation School District. It was modeled on the Tennessee Achievement District, which was a complete flop. The plan was funded by a wealthy mogul in Oregon, who filed to create a charter chain and make money off North Carolina taxpayers. He has no education experience. He saw easy pickings in the charter industry, especially when the legislature is so compliant and not too perceptive.

But what the legislature and John Bryan of Oregon didn’t count on was parent resistance. Parents in Durham organized to save Glenn Elementary School. The state, which started with a list of 48 schools for privatization, whittled it down to six. Glenn was one of the six.

The state just backed down and dropped Glenn.

Now parents want the whole retrograde ISD shut down.

A reader from Durham writes:

“VICTORY in Durham!!!

http://abc11.com/glenn-elementary-no-longer-on-list-of-schools-to-be-taken-over/2528853/

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article178705551.html

“We are now going to turn our attentions to getting rid of the NC Innovative School District altogether so that no public school will be threatened with nonconsensual takeover. We plan to show support for the schools that do get “selected” so the fight is not over, but this battle, for now, is won!!”

Earlier this morning, I posted about the wealthy businessman in Oregon who funded the North Carolina (not) Innovative School District, which will enable the state to take public schools away from local districts and give them to charter schools.

This strategy, as I pointed out, was tried and failed in Tennessee. The basic plan is to end local control and privatize the schools.

Now, we learn, the Oregon businessman was not just a philanthropist. He is going into the charter school business in North Carolina.

It’s a free-for-all, folks. Step right up and get your money, right from the taxpayers of North Carolina into your bank account!

“A company tied to a wealthy Libertarian donor who helped pass a state law allowing takeover of low-performing North Carolina schools is trying to win approval to operate those schools.

“Achievement For All Children was among the groups who applied for state approval to run struggling schools that will be chosen for the Innovative School District. Achievement For All Children is heavily connected to Oregon resident John Bryan, who is a generous contributor to political campaigns and school-choice causes in North Carolina.

“The company was formed in February and registered by Tony Helton, the chief executive officer of TeamCFA, a charter network that Bryan founded. The board of directors for Achievement for All Children includes former Rep. Rob Bryan, a Republican from Mecklenburg County who introduced the bill creating the new district, and Darrell Allison, who heads the pro-school choice group Parents For Educational Freedom in North Carolina.”

North Carolina is very easy-going about conflicts of interest. Note that the CEO of a charter chain just stepped down from the state’s Charter Schools Advisory Board.

“A spokeswoman for TeamCFA said she would provide comment when she could do so. Helton, who is chief executive officer of Achievement For All Children, did not immediately return a request for comment. Helton had cited an increased workload at TeamCFA for resigning this week from the state Charter Schools Advisory Board.

Advocates for public schools were outraged that Mr. Bryan of Oregon planned to make money by investing in NC charters:

“One wealthy Oregonian’s persistent lobbying resulting in the takeover of elementary schools in distressed North Carolina communities is disturbing enough, but to find out his organization may directly benefit makes the whole scheme even more questionable,” said Andrea Verykoukis, spokeswoman for Public Schools First NC.”

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article178169451.html#storylink=cpy

Justin Parmenter is an English teacher in North Carolina and is nationally board certified. He recently was part of a professional conference where he was asked what advice he would give himself if he were a first year teacher. Be aware as you read that Justin teaches in a state that was once considered the leader in the South in education policy, in the number of NBCT teachers, and in teacher pay. Since 2010, when a hard-right Tea Party Group took control of the legislature and gerrymandered the state, many laws have been passed with the intent of reducing the professional status of teachers and privatizing public schools.

Justin writes about his first year teaching on an Apache reservation in Arizona.

“My first job in an American public school was teaching 6th grade Language Arts at Whiteriver Middle School. This school is located on the White Mountain Apache Reservation in the poorest county in Arizona. It was a very difficult place to be a teacher but an even harder place to be a child. Many of my students were chronically absent and exhibited serious behavior problems when they were at school. Some suffered from the effects of fetal alcohol syndrome. Some of them struggled to read at a first grade level. Parent support was spotty, as some of my students’ families maintained deep misgivings about public education–understandably so given the appalling recent history of American Indian boarding schools that used inhumane methods to forcibly assimilate Native children into European-American culture.

“I began my job in Whiteriver believing that I was going to transform every child. My fresh graduate school perspective, cutting edge pedagogy, and research-based literacy practices were going to bring all of my students up to reading on grade level in a hurry and change the way they felt about education forever. I was in for a rude awakening.

“Despite my best efforts at applying what I’d learned in grad school, my students’ reading proficiency levels remained relatively unchanged. School and district-level formative assessments yielded disastrous results. Our pass rates on Arizona’s standardized reading test hovered around 20-25%, where they remain today(the school has since been renamed Canyon Day Junior High). Every day, the outcomes I was getting reminded me that my students were failing and, by extension, I was failing them. I would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and lie in bed wondering whether I was cut out for this work at all.”

He includes a graph showing the large attrition of teachers in their early years, which interestingly shows that most leave to teach in another state. This is not surprising given the legislature’s attacks on career teachers and its preference for TFA (the recently elected state superintendent is a TFA alum).

Initially, Justin blamed himself for his students’ poor scores. But over time, he realized the negative impact of poverty on school performance:

“While I was beating myself up about my inability to get my students to pass a test, I was unaware that our educational system’s data is more about measuring socioeconomic status than it is about measuring academic achievement. That was true in Whiteriver, Arizona two decades ago and it’s just as true in North Carolina today. Consider School Performance Grades, which routinely stigmatize entire schools as failures. The NC Department of Public Instruction’s most recent analysis of Performance and Growth of North Carolina Public Schools clearly shows that school report card grades and levels of poverty are inversely proportional to each other. As poverty goes up, school grades go down.”

Justin described the changes he made in his teaching so that students found the school work meaningful. The results did not necessarily show up in test scores, but he could see a difference in student work and engagement.

He writes:

“In an incredibly taxing profession that is chronically underpaid and under respected, our sense that our efforts are worth it is sometimes the only thing that keeps teachers going. Frequent turnover at our high poverty schools means those schools are more likely to house teachers who are just starting their careers, some of them probably believing they are going to transform every child and looking for evidence of their impact on their students. What we tell or don’t tell those teachers about that impact is critical. Our successes should not just be reflected in test scores and school letter grades which are often inextricably linked to our students’ backgrounds. As former Wake County Teacher of the Year Allison Reid puts it, we need to remember to focus on what is meaningful and not just what is measurable.”

There is a lot that Justin can teach new teachers.

There are many changes North Carolina could make if it valued teachers.

The News & Observer in North Carolina reports that charter schools have turned into havens for white flight. Twenty-nine percent of charter schools are 80% or more white, compared to only 14% of public schools.

Charter schools in North Carolina are more segregated than traditional public schools and have more affluent students.

Most charters have either a largely white population or a largely minority population, according to a News & Observer analysis. On the whole, charter schools are more white and less Latino than schools run by local districts.

In North Carolina school districts, slightly more than half the students come from low-income families. But in charter schools, one in three students are low-income.

Charters weren’t supposed to look like this. The 1996 state law that allowed charters required that, within one year of the schools opening, their populations would reflect the racial and ethnic composition of the school district.

The law defined one of the purposes of charters: increasing opportunities to learn for all students, with a special emphasis on students who are at risk of academic failure or those who are academically gifted.

The original charter law was the product of a bipartisan compromise brokered by a House Republican and a Senate Democrat. The requirements for racial and ethnic diversity were the authors’ response to worries of charter opponents that the schools would cherry-pick the best students, said former Rep. Steve Wood, the Republican who negotiated the law.

“Opponents were concerned there would be creaming across the top,” Wood said. The diversity requirement is “a laudable goal,” he said. “Some of us said it may not be a completely achievable goal.” The original law also capped charters at 100 schools.

The charter school law has been rewritten many times in the last two decades, including a major and extensively-debated change that removed the 100-school cap. Diversity is still mentioned, but it’s no longer a requirement. A 2013 law dropped the mandate and diluted the language so charters must “make efforts” to reflect the local school districts’ racial and ethnic composition.

Wib Gulley, a Democrat and former state senator who co-authored the 1996 law, said the diversity requirement was important, and charters should have lived up to it.

“It was a key provision that was meant to ensure that the charter schools didn’t segregate in some way and did not take only students from wealthy families and that kind of thing,” Gulley said. “If that’s the result even for one school, it is an undermining of the fundamental intent of the law. It perverts the premise of charter schools in a way that we never wanted and that both houses of the legislature voted to say would not happen.”

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article178022436.html#storylink=cpy