Archives for category: Ohio
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Corrupt Cybercharters: Ban Them All!

By dianeravitch
January 4, 2019 //
32

Shaina Cavazos of Chalkbeat in Indiana reports on the startling graduation rate of Indiana’s publicly funded virtual charter school: 2%. Two percent.

“About 2 percent of Indiana Virtual Pathways Academy’s 1,009 seniors graduated, putting the school’s graduation rate below just two others — a school that caters to students with significant intellectual and behavioral disabilities and an adult high school that enrolls only a couple dozen students each and graduated no students last year. Across the state, the vast majority of schools graduate at least three-quarters of their senior students.”

Do you remember when charter advocates promised that charters would be more successful, more innovative, and more accountable than public schools? They are not. For-profit Virtual Charter Schools are scams. They are a waste of money. They are a public embarrassment. Why are they allowed to open?

Peter Greene explains here about this Indiana cybercharter, which buys its existence by paying legislators, then collects public money to not educate anyone. This is not unusual. As you will see from the graph he reproduces, lobbying and campaign contributions area part of their business.

For-profit cybercharters, whether K12 Inc. or Connections Academy, should be illegal. They take public money, lobby legislators, get abysmal results, and are never held accountable. ECOT in Ohio was the darling of Republican politicians, who were happy to give its graduation speech, even though ECOT has the lowest graduation rate in the nation.

At the Indiana cybercharter that Greene writes about, only 10% of the money collected is spent on instruction!

These cybercharters are not schools. They are corporate honey pots that wastepublic money and children’s time.

If a state has children who require homebound instruction, the state should provide the online instruction, using certified teachers, with no profits, no lobbyists.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, For-Profit, Fraud, Indiana, Ohio, Virtual Charter Schools

Disgrace in Ohio! State Takeovers of Impoverished Districts

By dianeravitch
December 5, 2018 //
31

Jan Resseger writes that HB 70, the law allowing the state to take over school districts because they have low test scores, will be a permanent stain on John Kasich’s legacy. Who knew that Republicans believe that the best way to “fix” schools is to eliminate elected school boards? Did anyone tell the Ohio legislators about the failure of state takeovers in Michigan and Tennessee? So-called “Reformers” despise democracy.

The bill was rushed through the Republican-dominated legislature, which prefers to abrogate local control rather than invest resources in districts enrolling large numbers of poor children.

First the state took over Youngstown, now it is taking over East Cleveland and Lorain.

The newly appointed leaders are hiring uncertified administrators and bringing in TFA. Just what vulnerable children (don’t) need: totally unqualified educators.

The implementation of state takeover has been insensitive and insulting. Ohio’s Plunderbund reported in March, 2018 that Krish Mohip, the state overseer CEO in Youngstown, feels he cannot safely move his family to the community where he is in charge of the public schools. He has also been openly interviewing for other jobs including school districts as far away as Boulder, Colorado and Fargo, North Dakota. And a succession of members of Youngstown’s Academic Distress Commission have quit.

Plunderbund adds that Lorain’s CEO, David Hardy tried to donate the amount of what would be the property taxes on a Lorain house to the school district, when he announced that he does not intend to bring his family to live in Lorain. The Elyria Chronicle Telegram reported that Lorain’s CEO has been interviewing and hiring administrators without the required Ohio administrator certification. Hardy has also been courting Teach for America. In mid-November, the president of Lorain’s elected board of education, Tony Dimacchia formally invited the Ohio Department of Education to investigate problems under the state’s takeover Academic Distress Commission and its appointed CEO. He charged: “The CEO has created a culture of violence, legal violations, intimidation, and most importantly they have done nothing to improve our schools.” The Lorain Morning Journal’s Richard Payerchin describes Dimacchia’s concerns: “Dimacchia claimed student and teacher morale is at an all-time low, while violence (at the high school) is at an all-time high…”

At last week’s Statehouse rally, Youngstown Rep. Michele Lepore-Hagan described all the ways HB 70 abrogates democracy: “The legislation took away the voice of the locally elected school board members and gave an autocratic, unaccountable, appointed CEO total control over every facet of the system. The CEO can hire who he wants. Fire who he wants. Pay people whatever he wants. Hire consultants and pay them as much as he wants. Buy whatever he wants and pay as much as he wants for it. Tear up collective bargaining agreements. Ignore teachers. Ignore students. Ignore parents. And he also has the power to begin closing schools if performance does not improve within five years. Nearly four years in, here’s what the Youngstown Plan has produced: Ethical lapses. No-bid contracts. Huge salaries for the team of administrators the CEO hired. Concern and anxiety among students, parents, and teachers. And the resignation of most of the members of the Distress Commission who were charged with overseeing the CEO. Here’s what it hasn’t produced: better education for our kids.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Ohio, Privatization, Teach for America

The Times They Are a’Changing (Ohio Republicans Rediscover Public Schools)

By dianeravitch
November 4, 2018 //
11

Have you noticed that the candidates soppnsored by the charter industry say they support public schools and never say they want more charters.

Voucher supporters never say the V word. Instead they call vouchers “scholarshipsl or “tuition tax credits” or something else.

Suddenly, the biggest enemies of public schools proclaim their love for the very schools they have defunded and called “government schools” (ALEC’s term) now declare that they LOVE LOVE LOVE public schools. It must be election time.

Don’t be fooled!

Our reader Chiara writes about Ohio, where the mood has changed. Ohio Republicans authorized charters and vouchers and sent $1 billion to a failing virtual charter school, which went bankrupt. The same people who stole hundreds of millions from public schools are now asking you to trust them.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

She writes:

“It’s like the politicians are rusty in Ohio- out of practice. They’re so used to lock step public school bashing as a campaign tactic that they’re having trouble even pretending to support public schools.

“Mike DeWine doesn’t know what to say. He’s torn between his donors, his ideological opposition to public schools and his urgent need to get elected. You can see the struggle on his face as he casts about for something, anything to say to the 85% of families in this state who attend public schools. They haven’t spoken to us in years, other than to suggest we all enroll in the charters and private schools they prefer.

“I watch the debates and I expect one of them to revert to the last 15 years of training and start yelling “government schools!”, involuntarily. Public school bashing was such a surefire political winner for so many years they all look like they’re lost without it.

“No longer can Ohio politicians dump every problem they haven’t addressed on public schools and dodge accountability. The 15 year free ride is over.”

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Ohio, Privatization, Vouchers

Laura Chapman on Ohio’s Nonsensical and Destructive Report Cards for Schools

By dianeravitch
November 2, 2018 //
15

The idea of giving A-F grades to schools was a Jeb Bush invention. It is an almost perfect mirror of the poverty or affluence of the students in the school. Schools with high poverty levels will get low grades. This sets them up to be stigmatized as failures and to become juicy targets for tskeover and privatization. The privatizers keep the students they want and toss away those they don’t want. Meanwhile, the public money flows to private hands.

Laura Chapman here examines Ohio’s school report cards, which contain “multiple measures” to end up with the same result as a report card based only on test scores, which themselves measure family income and education.

She wrote this comment:

“The key components of the 2018 Ohio School Report Cards.

The six components are:

Achievement,
Gap Closing,
Improving At-Risk K-3 Readers,
Progress,
Graduation Rate,
Prepared for Success.

Districts and schools receive A-F grades on each of the six components and most of the individual measures for each component (e.g.a letter grade is assigned to Ohio’s EVASS metrics based on test scores. EVASS is a version of totally discredited VALUE-ADDED Metrics).

For the first time, districts and schools will be assigned overall letter grades. (e.g., Your school is D. Your school is an F.)

Here is the pitch for this ridicule-worthy scheme.

“Report cards are designed to give parents, communities, educators and policymakers information about the performance of districts and schools – to celebrate success and identify areas for improvement. This information identifies schools to receive intensive supports, drives local conversations on continuous improvement and provides transparent reporting on student performance. The goal is to ensure equitable outcomes and high expectations for all of Ohio’s students.”

One of these days I may count how many data points Ohio has shoved into the convoluted report card. Some are hardwired by the fools elected to the state house. Others are there in part from federal regulations. The rest are the product of a belief system that says, in effect measurement is an objective and infallible substitute for good judgment. Of course, the Report card grades track the relative affluence of the districts in Ohio and they are meaningless for Charter Schools. A recent conversation with a state school board member, running for re-election revealed total ignorance of problems with the value-added metric or the cost of the SAS contract for that misleading exercise.

reportcard.education.ohio.gov

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Ohio, Privatization, Testing

Ohio: Before You Vote, Watch This 3-Minute Video

By dianeravitch
November 1, 2018 //
6

This video is about the ECOT scandal, which siphoned hundreds of millions of dollars from Ohio’s public schools.

When you vote, think about the politicians who let this happen.

Categories For-Profit, Fraud, Ohio, Virtual Charter Schools

Denis Smith: The Five Most Common Words in Charterdom

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2018 //
17

Denis Smith worked for many years for the Ohio Department of Education. When he retired, he was employed in the office that oversees charter schools. He has written many articles about the scams and frauds that charter operators get away with in Ohio, as well as some that they don’t get away with.

He wrote me recently to say that the five most common words in charterdom are:

“The defendant will please rise.”

Isn’t it interesting that the pro-charter candidates, no matter which school district or city or state they live in, do not admit they are pro-charter.

Apparently the public is catching on, and it is not a good thing to admit that you want more charters.

Suddenly, everyone—even the execrable governor’s Scott Walker and Doug Ducey of AZ—call them selves “the Education Governor” and boast about (lie about) have they have helped public schools. Don’t believe them.

Any candidate funded by the Koch brothers, The Walton Family, Eli Broad, Reed Hastings, or Michael Bloomberg is a Pro-Charter Candidate. They are coming to privatize your public school and replace it with a national corporate chain school.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Industry, Fraud, Ohio, Privatization

Stephen Dyer: The ECOT Scandal Was Even Worse Than We Knew

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2018 //
17

Stephen Dyer of Innovation Ohio, a lawyer and former Ohio legislator, reports that the ECOT scandal is worse than previously known.

He writes:

New state funding reports indicate that ECOT had nearly 8,000 fake students in its last full year of operation. According to the Ohio Department of Education, its last year of operation, ECOT couldn’t account for about 20 percent of its students. However, the monthly finance reports ODE puts out suggests the number may have been closer to 55 percent.

First of all, the last year ECOT was fully operational was in the 2016-2017 school year. So I’m using that as a baseline for comparison.

In the 16-17 school year, ECOT received $103.6 million for 14,208 students. This year, it’s zero dollars. A lot of news stories have tried to figure out what happened to all those students. One of the challenges appears to be that they may not have actually had all those students….

ECOT graduated about 2,000 students in 2017, but even subtracting out those students from the 7,791 “missing” students means 40 percent of the ECOT total is unaccounted for — about double the rate that was found by ODE.

So there seems to be something going on here.

I would sure like to know how many, if any of the 7,791 students ECOT claimed it had in 2016-2017 that aren’t in charter schools anymore were actually ever there to begin with. Because it looks like the state’s 20 percent assessment may be significantly lower than first thought.

Follow him as he connects the dots.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Fraud, Ohio, Scandals, Virtual Charter Schools

Ohio: How Much Did ECOT Divert from YOUR School?

By dianeravitch
October 30, 2018 //
7

This is a handy website that will inform you how much money was diverted from your school district to fund the fraudulent ECOT virtual charter school.

Typing your address and learn how much money you lost, as ECOT man was protected by John Kasich, Mike DeWine (the Republican Candidate for Governor), and other Republican politicians.

https://www.kidsnotcorruption.com/

Betsy DeVos is a big fan of virtual charter schools like ECOT. She wants more of them.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Corruption, Education Reform, Ohio, Virtual Charter Schools

Ohio: Please Elect Louise Valentine and Help Andrew Brenner Become a Private Citizen Again

By dianeravitch
October 28, 2018 //
2

If you live in Ohio’s Senate District 19, please vote for Louise Valentine and help Andrew Brenner return to private life.

He is chair of the Senate Education Committee. He thinks that public schools are “socialism.” He received nice payouts from the ECOT scam. He needs to leave public life and return to private pursuits.

Read about him here.

He likes the word “socialist” and uses it to smear anyone or anything he doesn’t like. He doesn’t like public schools. He doesn’t like Louise Valentine. Socialist! She is an Ohio native, a graduate of public schools, Ohio State University, and a businesswoman. Among many other endorsements, she was endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police and Columbus Firefighters, The Columbus Building Trades Council, also the Ohio Education Association and Emily’s List. Not known as socialists.

As Denis Smith, formerly of the Ohio Department of Education, writes:

“Radical. Socialist. Extremist. This from the guy whose top campaign contributor is still shown to be William Lager of ECOT on Votesmart, a popular campaign finance website. But he has no problem taking money derived from public funds that were diverted from those “socialist” public school districts. This from a guy who is the darling of the National Rifle Association, an extremist group that many believe fits the profile of a domestic terrorist organization through its indifference to the rising number of school shootings and promotion of a weapons culture in this country…

“We’ve read about his views of public schools as examples of socialism. We’ve read that he thinks cursive writing is the most important skill that the socialist schools aren’t currently teaching. We know that he hasn’t returned that socialist public money that was given to him by ECOT. And we know that he loves the Second Amendment while dishonoring the First Amendment by blocking constituents from commenting on his social media pages.

“Andrew Brenner must be willing to show up and answer these questions. He also needs to show his mettle and seeming command of the issues by debating Louise Valentine.

“But don’t hold your breath.

“A candidate who can hurl insults and tag his opponent as #LyinLouise but doesn’t have the courage to face her in front of an audience does not deserve your support. And like his hero, Donald Trump, there comes a time when you just run out of bullshit.

“Andrew Brenner has reached that point.

“On November 6, if you live in Senate District 19, please show up and be counted. Vote for Louise Valentine for Ohio Senate. By doing so, you’ll send Andrew Brenner to retirement so that he can have time to learn more about socialism, attend Jerry Falwell University, and work on becoming a realtor.

“Um, there is one more thing. If Brenner acquires a public pension due to his time in the legislature, he would be submitting to socialism.”

Please save Andrew Brenner from taking socialist government money.

Vote for Louise Valentine.

Categories Accountability, Ohio

Jan Resseger: ECOT Made Charters an Election Year Issue in Ohio

By dianeravitch
October 22, 2018 //
4

For years, the politicians in Ohio took campaign contributions from the charter industry, let the charter lobbyists write the law regulating them, and ignored their frauds.

But the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow went bankrupt, and the frauds could no longer be ignored.

Jan Resseger writes here that the ECOT scandal has turned charters into an election issue. This is good news for anyone who cares about accountability and transparency for public funds.

The surprise really ought to be that the 17-year, billion dollar ripoff of tax dollars by the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) has remained among high profile election issues in this 2018 election season. After all, when USA Today profiled 28 American cities which have not yet recovered from the 2008 Recession, 9 of them were in Ohio: Warren, Youngstown, Mansfield, Marion, Lorain, Middletown, Sandusky, Akron and Dayton. Besides the economy, the opioid crisis is devastating parts of the state and healthcare more generally is an issue.

But the ECOT scandal hasn’t died as an issue on voters’ minds. Partly this is due to clever work by public education advocates and Democrats. When ECOT’s property was auctioned off, an anonymous purchaser paid $152 in taxes and fees to buy the costume of ECOT’s mascot, Eddy the Eagle. You can watch Eddy on twitter, @EddyEagleECOT, traveling to political events across the state carrying his “Ask Me About Mike DeWine” sign. DeWine, running as Ohio’s Republican candidate for governor, has been Ohio’s attorney general since 2010 but only filed a lawsuit to recover tax dollars lost to ECOT last winter as the school was being shut down.

Because of the way Ohio distributes state aid and the way its charter school law works, over its 17-year life, ECOT ate up local school operating levy dollars in addition to state aid. A tech-savvy opponent of Ohio’s entrenched Republican majority has now set up https://www.kidsnotcorruption.com/ , an interactive website which describes ECOT: “ECOT THE SCANDAL: Wondering just how bad is the ECOT scandal? Well, you should be angry because ECOT is the biggest taxpayer ripoff in Ohio history and Republicans are responsible. Sadly, it’s our kids who were hurt.” At this website it is possible to track how much each Ohio school district has lost to ECOT over the years: for example, from Cleveland’s schools, $ 39,405,981; from Columbus’ schools, $591,000,000; from Cincinnati’s schools, $ 14,648,988.

Several local school districts have now initiated legal action on their own against ECOT to recover lost funds, and three other school districts so far have filed in court to argue that they do not want Attorney General Mike DeWine, who earlier this year filed to recover funds from ECOT, representing them. The Dayton Daily News‘ Josh Sweigart reports: “Springfield City Schools is joining Dayton Public Schools and the Logan-Hocking School District in arguing in court that they don’t want the state representing them in getting money from ECOT. The school districts argue that Attorney General Mike DeWine—the Republican candidate for governor—is soft on charter schools and has received campaign donations from ECOT founder Bill Lager… DPS and Springfield are both working with the Cleveland-based law firm Cohen, Rosenthal and Kramer. The firm is working on a contingency fee, meaning it gets paid only if the districts succeed… (T)he districts are skeptical that DeWine would be as aggressive as their attorney.”

William Phillis, executive director of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding, notes, in his October 11, Daily E-Mail, that Attorney General Mike DeWine has filed a memorandum opposing the intervention of local school districts in this case on their own because their interest is “substantively remote from the claims” in the Attorney General’s lawsuit. Phillis notes that William Lager, ECOT’s founder and operator has made “essentially the same arguments” to oppose the intervention by specific school districts on their own behalf. Phillis comments: “It is curious that both the Plaintiff and Defendant in this case are on the same page. That accord might validate the importance of intervention by the districts. If they agree on this matter, maybe they will agree on more substantial issues.”

On October 8, the Cleveland Plain Dealer endorsed Cleveland attorney, Steve Dettelbach for attorney general in the fall election over his opponent Dave Yost, the current Republican state auditor. Yost was elected to that post in November, 2010. He has been accused of moving too slowly against ECOT, and the Plain Dealer‘s endorsement reflects this concern: “There is a tiebreaker in this decision however, and it comes in the form of the long-running ECOT… scandal that has hung like a millstone around the neck of a number of Republicans on the Ohio ballot this year who took large campaign contributions from those connected to the now-shuttered online school. That includes Yost, who announced he’s given more than $29,000 in ECOT-related contributions to charity but denies the campaign donations impacted his actions… But the fact remains that the whistleblower’s warning came in 2014 and Yost’s office did not start investigating with gusto until 2016.”

Read it all.

The politicians eagerly accepted ECOT’s invitation to be its commencement speaker. Even Jeb Bush flew to Ohio to testify to ECOT’s awesomeness.

Every politician in Ohio who facilitated and ignored this massive rip-off of taxpayer’s dollars and waste of kids’s lives should be voted out.

Mike DeWine was State Attorney General abd ignored the ECOT fraud; he is now running for Governor.

Dave Yost was State Auditor and ignored the fraud until it blew up in his face; he is running for Attorney General.

They are responsible for the state’s failure to monitor ECOT and for the favorable treatment ECOT received. Voters should hold them accountable for this massive fraud.

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, For-Profit, Fraud, Ohio, Virtual Charter Schools
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »