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Oklahoma: Tulsa Charter School, Mired in Chaos and Scandal, Will Close in June

By dianeravitch
January 27, 2019 //
5

The Langston Hughes Academy for Art and Technology, a Tulsa charter school, will close by the end of June.

The school has been caught up in a series of scandals. Grade tampering. Sexual misconduct. Declining enrollments. Chaos. Mismanagement. A deputy reported: “a general lack of structure and order at the school, unfilled teacher vacancies and even faculty meetings held during the day left students unsupervised to the point that there were physical assaults, drug usage, medications kept in the school’s main office being dispensed and consumed without adult supervision, and students freely leaving campus.”

The school wants more time, but is not likely to get it.

https://www.tulsaworld.com/news/local/education/new-issues-keep-popping-up-langston-hughes-academy-ordered-to/article_fe7f1cea-da34-52fb-9b96-c41f9c200a93.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=user-share via @tulsaworld

 

The recommendation to yank the school’s state accreditation came after state accreditation officers reportedly raised new questions about the truthfulness of the school’s student counts, its compliance with federal laws that dictate how special education students must be served and corroboration of some of the Tulsa deputy’s claims about the school not completing required criminal background checks on employees.

“If we do not see the kind of improvement and corrective action plans that have not been met after being agreed to, we as a state are going to have to answer to the Office of Inspector General and U.S. Department of Education for what we allowed to happen,” Hofmeister said. “This is not about intention. It is about capacity and what this charter school board stood before us and told us they would do — and did not do.”

School leaders, their attorney, and even state Sen. Kevin Matthews, who represents the part of Tulsa where Langston Hughes Academy is located, pleaded for more time.

Libby Adjei, who was hired as Langston Hughes’ new superintendent in early September, told the board that she had secured assistance and training for the school’s employees from wherever she could find it, including the charter’s authorizer, Langston University, and the state Department of Education.

And Langston Hughes Board President Carmen Pettie questioned why the sheriff’s office had not shared the school resource officer’s concerns with school leaders — or even made arrests based on some of the described activities.

But state board members said the documented issues were too numerous and too serious.

“What is distressing is the students have spoken with their feet,” said board member Bill Price, pointing to declining enrollment figures at the school, which has added one grade each year since it opened in 2015-16 for only freshmen. “And I know so much of the blame is deserved by the previous administration and they managed to hide it very effectively and I know it seems unfair now that this has been brought to light and it is so difficult to turn around. But I just basically don’t have confidence that the whole team is going to be able to run a school effectively.”

Board member Lee Baxter said, “Every board meeting has given Langston Hughes exactly what they wanted — more time. More time, more time, more time.”

Reports of turmoil at the four-year-old school began in April, when Rodney Clark, the founder and then-superintendent and three other staff members were suspended by the school’s governing board amid allegations of grade tampering.

The school made headlines again in October when a bus driver and football coach at the academy was charged in Tulsa County District Court with second-degree rape and making a lewd or indecent proposal to students at the school.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Oklahoma, Privatization, Scandals

John Thompson: What Mike Petrilli Doesn’t Know About Oklahoma, Part 2

By dianeravitch
January 7, 2019 //
35

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, wrote a three part series on education “Reform” and politics in his state.

This is part 2.

The Fordham Institute’s Mike Petrilli seemed to be whistling through the graveyard in “The End of Education Policy.” The corporate reformer argued that “Our own Cold War pitted reformers against traditional education groups; we have fought each other to a draw, and reached something approaching homeostasis. Resistance to education reform has not collapsed like the Soviet Union did. Far from it. But there have been major changes that are now institutionalized and won’t be easily undone, at least for the next decade.”

https://edexcellence.net/articles/the-end-of-education-policy

In fact, the failed school “reform” experiment is losing politically as the public rejects test-driven, competition-driven reform. The Billionaires Boys Club and federal and state governments have wasted billions of dollars on their theories. Now their political campaign is stumbling.

Not surprisingly, the attempt to use the stresses of high stakes testing and nonstop competition between schools to remedy the stresses of poverty and trauma, created a fiasco. They used increased segregation by charter schools to counter the stress of racial segregation. They even used untested and unreliable value-added models, that are biased against teachers in high-challenge schools, in order to recruit more talent to those schools!?!?!

The Obama administration and edu-philanthropists tried to entice charters into serving more high-poverty students with hundreds of millions of dollars of grants. As the reliable Hechinger Report’s Jill Barshay explains, only 18 percent on the era’s innovations produced “any positive impact on student achievement,” and “some of these positive impacts were very tiny.” And even in many charters that initially claimed to produce big test scores gains, the result was “‘quiet churn’ of students from year to year, which slows achievement for both students who change schools and those who stay.”

The ‘dirty secret’ about educational innovation

High student mobility in Milwaukee stalls achievement, despite well-planned school reforms

The Hechinger Report’s Caroline Preston describes a state-authorized charter school in Seminole, Ok. as a test case as to “whether these privately operated, publicly funded schools can open in small communities without eroding public education.” The article’s title, “A rural Charter School Splits an Oklahoma Town.” The subtitle is: A businessman makes an end run around community opponents. Now, he wants to expand others like it,” should serve as a warning.

A rural charter school splits an Oklahoma town

Even though it seems inexplicable, especially in a state that has too many rural school systems, Oklahoma allows charters in small towns like Seminole that only has around 1,600 students. If the charter school could meet its goal of serving as many as 700 students, the public school system would be wrecked.

Even more illogical is a law that allows the state Board of Education to override local decisions on granting charters. And due to one of the “reforms” in the full corporate reform agenda which was adopted at the beginning of the decade, the board is dominated in true believers by choice and the edu-politics of destruction for blowing up the “status quo.” It’s unlikely that the board will ever meet a charter application that it doesn’t love. Even if the charter isn’t capable of helping kids, it hurts the privatizers’ opponents.

Preston explains that the charter founder, Paul Campbell, runs a company, Enviro Systems, that wants graduates who could staff his business. She notes that Campbell lacked knowledge about schools, but his “can-do, pro-business attitude fits in with the ethos of this working class, Trump-supporting town.”

However, many patrons believed:

It could inappropriately blur the lines between schools and the workplace. Opponents also felt that Campbell, who had no background in education, had put together a proposal pockmarked with problems, one that didn’t offer students any opportunities they couldn’t already get from existing programs. Church services grew tense. Friendships soured.

At first glance, it might seem like Seminole is lucky that the charter’s goal was 60 students in the first year, and it only served 29. But the overall threat remains. As a former school board member said, “she worried the charter school would be a private school ‘in sheep’s clothing,’ benefiting only students of families with the means to sort out the school’s application process and ferry their kids to and from school.” And sure enough, about 45 percent the charter’s inaugural class qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, in contrast to 73 percent in the Seminole district.

And once again, Fordham’s Mike Petrilli stakes out a position about schools, a community, and a state he doesn’t know. Petrilli says of Campbell, “More power to him.” He endorses Campbell’s “vision of helping lift local school performance with market-style inducements. ‘Here is a person who is trying to bring up the quality of education in the community. He’s an employer; this is where a lot of the energy for education reform has come from, the employers who find they are just not getting the workers they need or they don’t have the schools to recruit people into the community.’”

The point should be clear. Charters have failed in terms of school improvement. Regardless of whether charter expansion is spun as a “portfolio” or an “innovation” school, it is a tool for economic gain as opposed to an education investment.

In urban districts, privatization is a means to spur gentrification, as well as to break unions. My approach has been to schmooze with Oklahoma City leaders, hoping to ground policy decisions in at least some education facts. As one of the most powerful and candid business leaders told me in response, “You may be right. I don’t know that much about education.” But low-performing schools make economic development more difficult, and “I believe economic growth will lift all boats.”

As will be explained in the next post, political and business leaders are still hearing nonstop spin from Fordham, edu-philanthropists, and portfolio advocates, and their pitch often sounds pretty good to business people who don’t know much about education.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Oklahoma, Privatization, Testing

John Thompson: The News from Oklahoma, Part 1

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2019 //
9

This is the first of a three-part series. Last spring, Oklahoma experiences a mass teacher walkout to protest underfunding of public schools.

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher, writes:

Oklahoma made national headlines in 2018 because of its teacher walkout; teachers running for the legislature; and a “Blue Wave” in Oklahoma City and the nation’s biggest congressional upset. But the election of a vocal Trump supporter as governor has emboldened privatizers. In some ways, the drama is more common in states, like Oklahoma, that have cut schools and public services in the most extreme manner. Mostly, however, the assault on the state’s schools and the teachers’ counter-attack is representative of national privatization campaign.

Test-driven, charter-driven reform failed, so now the Billionaires Boys Club is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in selling the “Portfolio Model.”

The Portfolio Model is new and different. Its strategy is the opposite: charter-driven, test-driven reform.

Seriously, the Oklahoma education crisis and teacher shortage has been extreme, but a large part of our ordeal was the predictable result of the corporate reform agenda. It was imposed on our schools just like it was across the nation. Oklahomans now need to ask what would have happened to our dramatically underfunded schools had a grassroots teachers’ revolt not rolled back the “reforms” of 2010 to 2014. We then need to ask what will happen to our still-weakened public education systems if we can’t fight off these new, supposedly kinder and gentler reforms, like the portfolio model.

Non-Oklahomans might not recognize the full, frightening message conveyed by the Oklahoman’s editorial entitled, “A Welcome Shift to Oklahoma Education Reform.” It was accompanied by a photograph of the conservative Speaker of the House Charles McCall, who now has a majority (if he doesn’t lose Republican legislators who were teachers) so large that it can’t be stalled by Democrats. McCall’s frightening glare previewed the message he conveyed to the extremely conservative newspaper editors: spending increases are needed but “We need to look at educational outcomes.” Sounding like he is oblivious to the fiasco which resulted from the accountability-driven, competition-driven experiments imposed at the beginning of the decade, the Speaker said we need to “look at both sides of the ledger.”

https://newsok.com/article/5617174/a-welcome-shift-to-oklahoma-education-reform

The editorial then quoted Senate Pro Tem Greg Treat, who leads an even more daunting Republican majority, who said that the Oklahoma City (OKCPS) and Tulsa districts (TPS) will be targeted. The Oklahoman then editorialized for Treat’s call for reforms in the urban districts, “That echoed comments Treat previously made to The Oklahoman editorial board, when he warned that continued struggles in the state’s two largest districts are ‘detrimental’ to the state’s economic future.”

For that reason, Oklahomans, as well as educators and school patrons across the nation, should review the last decade of corporate reforms. I’ll admit to being naively hopeful when the Gates Foundation announced its district-charter collaboration grants and I understood why Tulsa accepted the Gates teacher quality grant. But I had no way of knowing that the Gates Teacher Effectiveness Model (TLE) value-added teacher evaluations would become the model for the state’s dysfunctional TLE law. As the TPS leaders said at the beginning, before they fired or “exited” 260 teachers and 26 school leaders, the TLE wouldn’t become a “gotcha” system; they claimed to understand that Tulsa faced a teacher shortage, so the system would focus on improving teacher quality.

Even before the Chiefs for Change’s Deborah Gist staffed the TPS administration with nine Broad Academy graduates, Gates grants for charter/district partners required value-added school reports across district and district-authorized charters, and opening more “high-performing” charter schools in high-needs areas. Another grant funded “innovative professional development systems to create personalized learning systems for teachers;” and an “experiment with innovative modes of delivery.” After Gist took over, edu-philanthropists funded the salaries of three central office administrators, including a “director of portfolio management” to “absorb the duties of the director of partnership and charter schools.”
https://www.tulsaworld.com/news/education/tulsa-public-schools-teacher-evaluation-system-is-changing-culture-has/article_6be79be3-d934-5d4a-98ef-5ec90bcea9e9.html

https://www.tulsaschools.org/our-schools/charterpartner

https://www.lighthouse-academies.org/news/item/tulsa-public-schools-gets-gates-grant-to-improve-charter-collaboration/

https://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Grants-Database/Grants/2014/09/OPP1114657

https://www.tulsaworld.com/news/education/tulsa-public-schools-to-add-three-administrative-positions-paid-for/article_ca88f531-2f29-5232-88c1-0d6316957f1a.html
So, did the millions of dollars of money from Gates and other edu-philanthropists improve teaching and learning?
Because of Tulsa’s previous commitment to early education, students enter 3rd grade ahead of their peers in the OKCPS but TPS students’ progress from 3rd to 8th grade is the nation’s 7th slowest according to data from Stanford’s Center for Education Policy Analysis. Its student growth advances only 3.8 years over the next five. By contrast, OKCPS students progress 4.4 years from third to eighth grade. Despite – or because of – the district’s reforms, Tulsa has about 75 percent more inexperienced teachers than the even more challenged Oklahoma City schools.

A recent Tulsa World article praised the TPS Teacher Corp led by Quentin Liggins, the Broad-trained director of talent initiatives, calling it a success because it helped 74 emergency certified teachers secure jobs.
https://www.tulsaworld.com/news/education/tps-educators-discuss-benefits-of-tulsa-teacher-corps-as-program/article_bd9c898c-938e-512d-acb4-257ea9edba45.html?utm_source=Education+Watch&utm_campaign=ad277b68cb-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_12_17_02_25&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0ec15fa3fb-ad277b68cb-101023449&mc_cid=ad277b68cb&mc_eid=05d2eb1443

But, that sidesteps the key question that the legislature and the governor should ask: Given all the money and effort invested in the Gates TLE, why the TPS can’t retain experienced teachers, resulting in 34 percent of TPS’s teachers being hired in the past two years?
The World enthusiastically praised the system where applicants spend “about 15 to 20 hours completing online coursework during the spring” and attend “the six-week program in June with in-classroom training.” It then quoted a Teacher Corp teacher who praised its classroom management training which “went a long way in helping Martin [the teacher] instill some order in her class of kindergartners.”

And that leads to the question that legislators should ask that will be explored in a subsequent post. Given the importance of teaching reading for comprehension, hopefully by 3rd grade, why are we dumping that responsibility on rookie, emergency certified teachers?

Could that help explain why Oklahoma is #2 in the nation in retaining k through 2nd graders?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Oklahoma, Privatization, Testing

Oklahoma: Businessman Splits Rural Town by Opening a Charter to Compete with Public School

By dianeravitch
December 19, 2018 //
7

I read this story with a growing sense of disgust. A businessman in Oklahoma opened a charter school in a small town to focus on career readiness and job training, functions already offered by the local public school.

This man, with no experience in education, lured 29 students to share his vision and abandon the community public school. He did so over the objections of the local school district.

Within the walls of the Academy of Seminole, eight rented rooms in a community college library, it can be hard to see why the little school has kicked up so much dust in this former oil boomtown, population 7,300. On a recent Friday, businessman and school founder Paul Campbell addressed the students, just 29 freshmen and sophomores, to tell them what it’s like to run a business.
What he dislikes? Making small talk at political events and “firing people.” What he enjoys? “I love doing something that no one thinks can be done. That’s why we’re sitting in this school.”

Campbell said the “thesis” of the school is that “on day one of your ninth grade, literally hour one … we start talking about what you want to do with your life.” Speakers have included a health care CEO, professional dancers and a speech pathologist. Academy students mapped out various careers they might pursue, and spent their first semester doing a research project on their chosen path. That focus on jobs is a direction in which more schools are headed, amid rising concern that young people are graduating unprepared for the workforce, especially in rural towns like this one. Last year Oklahoma joined a growing list of states requiring students to develop a career plan in order to graduate. And, in a sense, Campbell’s can-do, pro-business attitude fits in with the ethos of this working class, Trump-supporting town.

But while Campbell may dislike politicking, he’s had to do a lot of it to get his school off the ground and keep it going in the face of a chorus of concern from local residents. That’s because the Academy of Seminole is a rural charter school; its establishment is part of a small movement to bring this taxpayer-funded version of school choice to more remote corners of the country.

How much money will the local district lose to this charter?Will the public school lose a teacher or two? Will class sizes increase?

Oklahoma was singled out by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities as the state where general per-student funding had fallen more than any other state—by 28.2% from 2008-2018.

Because of low funding, many districts in Oklahoma offer only four days a week of school.

And we are supposed to be impressed that some egotistical businessman in Seminole, Oklahoma, has opened a charter school for 29 students?

Mike Petrilli, writing from the comfort of his think-tank perch in D.C., is delighted about the opening of a charter in a town of less than 8,000 people, where the school budget is tight. “More power to him,” says Mike.

But others say residents are right to worry about the sprouting of charters in their hometowns. Schools often play an integral role in the life of a small community, offering a central meeting place, social services and additional support. If a charter grew popular enough to draw hundreds of kids and capture those students’ share of funding allocated by the state, it could erode not just schools but the fabric of communities. Bryan Mann, an assistant professor at the University of Alabama’s college of education, has studied charter schools in Pennsylvania and noted that, while the research on rural charters is still new, these schools could pose a threat to public education.

“Choice is great, but if having choice is undermining the dominant choice that the majority of families rely on and have relied on for decades or longer, then what good ultimately is that doing?” he said.

The original proposal envisioned that the school would open with 60 students and grow to 500. It opened with 32 and three dropped out. The owner plans to expand to become a Pre-K-12 school. Imagine those three- and four-year-olds, planning their futures as workers!

The funding for the charter school comes from the districts that lost students.

But guess who else paid to open a rural school with 29 students? We did.

The academy has had to make a number of changes since Campbell first pitched his idea. Not only has the school’s approach to career preparation been refined, but Campbell decided to forego the services of the charter operator, whose use was core to his application, instead relying on Hawthorne, the head of school, in part to save costs. While the charter received $600,000 in federal start-up money and $325,000 from the Walton Family Foundation, the school’s viability will depend on additional fundraising.

Betsy DeVos supplied $600,000 in federal funds to create this job-training institution to suck money out of underfunded public schools.

Here’s a reform that would make charter schools viable: no charter should be authorized over the objections of the local school board.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Funding, Oklahoma, Privatization

John Thompson: Oklahoma Republicans Long to Copy Florida’s Mediocrity

By dianeravitch
December 6, 2018 //
1

Betsy DeVos says that Florida is a national model.

She loves Florida because she invested millions of dollars imposing vouchers and charters, despite the provision of the State Constitution that requires a uniform system of common schools.

Actually, Florida’s performance on NAEP is mediocre. Its fourth grade scores are swell because low-scoring third-graders are not allowed to enter fourth grade. A really neat trick! Pay attention to eighth grade scores: In eighth grade math, students in Florida are well below the national average. In eighth grade reading, Florida is right at the national average. Nothing impressive about Florida, other than gaming the fourth grade scores by holding back third-graders with low scores. By eighth grade, the game is over, and the results are not impressive.

Thompson says that Oklahoma lawmakers are in love with a libertarian study claiming that spending less produces the best education! Is that why the elites spend $50,000 a year or more on tuition to get lower class sizes and experienced teachers? The only time that money doesn’t matter is if you have a lot of it.

Despite Florida being average on NAEP, Oklahoma legislators hope to be just like Florida!

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher, brings us up to date:

Oklahoma edu-politics remains in the spotlight after the 2018 election and it illustrates plenty of national issues. Despite many electoral gains, educators must worry about the state’s inexperienced governor, Kevin Stitt. It sometimes seems like Jeb Bush’s “astroturf” think tank, ExcelinEd, has found a second home in our State Capitol. Will the governor believe their spin?

Even worse, as reported by Valerie Strauss in the Washington Post, Republicans are being pressured by their own party to even “‘abolish public education, which is not a proper role of government, and allow the free market to determine pay and funding, eliminating the annual heartache we experience over this subject.’” The claim is that the state can reduce “‘its dependence on the tax structure by funding it through such means as sponsorships, advertising, endowments, tuition fees, etc.’”

https://www.excelined.org/team/matthew-h-joseph-2/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2018/11/27/republican-party-an-oklahoma-county-makes-clear-its-opposition-public-education/?utm_term=.e7b666b89e01

More importantly, the Oklahoman newspaper recently editorialized that our state should learn from the Reason Foundation, and from Florida, which supposedly is “the state achieving the greatest efficacy in education spending.” The editorial mistakenly claimed that the reforms Oklahoma implemented in 2011 and 2012, but that have been watered down in our state, have worked in Florida. The newspaper concludes, “Instead of backing off, Reason’s education rankings indicate Oklahoma lawmakers should double down” on their accountability-driven, choice-driven reforms.

https://newsok.com/article/5616294/education-report-merits-review-in-spending-debate

In fact, Florida’s 3rd grade retention policy has not been shown to do more good than harm to students, although “if you hold back low-performing third graders, the fourth grade scores the next year will appear to jump.” Even charter supporters such as those at CREDO acknowledge that Florida’s charters have not increased student outcomes, largely resulting in a decline of student performance. And the state’s online for-profit charters have a three-year attrition rate of 99 percent, and have driven down student performance gains by as much as -.46 std, which is approaching the loss of a year of learning, per year.

Click to access TT_Mathis_BushEd.pdf

http://credo.stanford.edu/reading-state-charter-impacts/

Click to access Online%20Charter%20Study%20Final.pdf

Reason’s “Find Everything You Know about State Education Rankings Is Wrong,” by Stan J. Liebowitz and Matthew L. Kelly claims to be the antithesis of “the self-serving interests of education functionaries who only gain from higher spending.” If the tone of the article doesn’t set off alarms, a review of its methodology shows its conclusions were preordained by a journal devoted to “Free Markets.” These sorts of papers serve as props for advancing the claim that money doesn’t matter.

https://reason.com/archives/2018/10/07/everything-you-know-about-stat

As Rutgers’ Bruce Baker explains, Reason’s authors “confidently assert that the higher performing states are those with a) weaker teachers’ unions and b) more children in charter schools.” However, they overlook a vast body of research to the contrary. They also ignore economic status and weight racial groups as equal factors in a way that is “specious at best,” and produced findings that “would only mislead policymakers.”

https://nepc.colorado.edu/newsletter/2018/11/rankings

Student performance is determined more by the kids’ zip code than by the classroom. So why didn’t Reason and its paper attempt to control for economic disadvantage?

https://www.brookings.edu/research/how-life-outside-of-a-school-affects-student-performance-in-school/

Reason uses race as a substitute for economic advantage and disadvantage in a manner that is not only methodologically indefensible; it is likely a tactic which predetermines the ideology-driven conclusion that Florida and other border states (that oppose unions and support choice) are more efficient. I will just cite Hispanic student data as one example why their analysis is invalid.

The term “Hispanic” includes a wide range of subgroups, longterm citizens who are more likely to be affluent than the recent immigrants to places like Oklahoma City; Cubans who came to Florida a half century ago, as well as new arrivals from Mexico and Central America; and high-performing “bilingual” students as well as more costly to educate English Language Learners.

Before trusting the use of racial categories as a proxy for economic status, We should remember that Hispanics in Florida earn a median income which is $1,200 per person more than their counterparts in Oklahoma. The poverty rate for Oklahoma Hispanics who are17 years and younger is about 20 percent higher than Florida’s. Oklahoma Hispanic families are more likely to lack health insurance, with the big difference being that the majority of foreign-born Oklahoma Hispanics lack coverage.

http://www.pewhispanic.org/states/state/fl/

http://www.pewhispanic.org/states/state/ok/

Similarly, the percentage of black Oklahoma children who live in poor households is about 17 percent higher than black children in Florida. Oklahoma youth also are first in the nation in surviving four Adverse Childhood Experiences, and they are growing up in a state that is near the bottom of most child welfare metrics. In other words, the use of race as a substitute for economic advantage and disadvantage is one example why the Reason methodology gives a misleading picture of what it would cost to educate all children.

I must emphasize – contrary to the Reason ideology – that the additional costs to achieve equity are worth it. Education is so important that advocates, conservative, moderate or liberal, should also invest in research that meets high scholarly standards.

New Oklahoma decision-makers should expect plenty of cheap and easy, evidence-free proposals by noneducators. For instance, the legislative interim session was briefed by the Oklahoma Chamber of Commerce’s Oklahoma Achieves. It said that high-challenge schools should learn from systems that have lower per student spending but higher student outcomes. So, the inner city OKCPS schools merely need to emulate the best practices of Deer Creek, Oakdale, and other small, rich, exurban systems!?!?

https://public.tableau.com/profile/okachieves#!/vizhome/OklahomaSchoolDistrictSpendingComparedtoStudentOutcomes/SDSpendingComparedtoStudentOutcomes
I would also urge our new legislators and governor to look deeply into the Rutgers Education Law Center’s estimates of what it would take to bring our students to the national average in student performance. Like Florida almost does, Oklahoma spends enough to bring our most affluent quintile of students to the national average, but we would need to invest an additional $6,600 per student to provide equity for our poorest kids. (Florida would only need an additional $4,489 to do so.)

https://public.tableau.com/views/NCMWebsite/NECM?:embed=y&:display_count=yes&publish=yes&:showVizHome=no

https://public.tableau.com/views/NCMWebsite/NECM?:embed=y&:display_count=yes&publish=yes&:showVizHome=no

I also hope they will read Bruce Baker’s new book, Educational Inequity and School Finance: Why Money Matters for America’s Students. The renowned scholar, Helen Ladd, writes that Baker “draws on his many years of research to destroy the myth that money in education doesn’t matter, and convincingly argues that equitable and adequate funding are prerequisites for an effective education system.”

http://hepg.org/hep-home/books/educational-inequality-and-school-finance

The new legislators and governor will face a steep learning curve, and the effort necessary to craft policies based on real science will be intimidating. But as new educators used to be taught, for every complex problem, there is a solution that is quick, simple, and wrong.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Florida, Funding, Oklahoma

Oklahoma: Republican County Chair Recommends That State Stop Paying for Public Schools

By dianeravitch
December 1, 2018 //
48

The Republican Party chair of Canadian County in Oklahoma wrote a letter proposing that the state stop financing public education.

Andrew Lopez, Republican Party chair for suburban Oklahoma City’s Canadian County, signed the letter sent last week. It requested that the state no longer manage the public school system, or at least consider consolidating school districts. Public schools should seek operational money from sponsorships, advertising, endowments and tuition fees instead of taxes, the letter says.

Other Republicans rebuked him and said that they planned to raise education funding.

Rep. Rhonda Baker, a former teacher and current chair of the House common education committee, tells The Oklahoman in an article published Thursday that increasing education funding remains one of her priorities for next year.

“I have always been and will continue to be a supporter of public education,” Baker said.

Oklahoma Republican Party Chair Pam Pollard said Lopez’s letter doesn’t reflect the party’s position.

But Lopez said the GOP lawmakers are betraying party principles, including through increasing the size of government. His letter also called for abolishing abortion and eliminating unnecessary business-licensing agencies.

“In government we have a system that says we believe it’s a good idea to take (money) from you by force to educate other people’s children,” Lopez said. “That doesn’t appear to be a fair deal to me.”

In the recent elections, 16 educators won seats in the Oklahoma Legislature. The education caucus grew to 25 lawmakers in office that come from an education background, whether that be a teacher or school administrator position. Sixteen are Republicans, nine are Democrats. Eight are in the Senate and 17 in the House.

Lopez’s letter demonstrates the importance of building strong support for public education.

The Founding Fathers, acting as the Continental Congress, passed the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which established the template for new states. It prohited slavery in the new states, and it set aside one of sixteen plots in each township for schooling. The ordinance began: “”Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”

John Adams wrote in 1785:

the social science will never be much improved untill the People unanimously know and Consider themselvs as the fountain of Power and untill they Shall know how to manage it Wisely and honestly. reformation must begin with the Body of the People which can be done only, to affect, in their Educations. the Whole People must take upon themselvs the Education of the Whole People and must be willing to bear the expences of it. there should not be a district of one Mile Square without a school in it, not founded by a Charitable individual but maintained at the expence of the People themselvs they must be taught to reverence themselvs instead of adoreing their servants their Generals Admirals Bishops and Statesmen.

It seems that Mr. Lopez is unfamiliar with American history.

Categories Funding, History, Oklahoma

John Thompson: How a Democrat Won in a Gerrymandered Red, Red District in Oklahoma

By dianeravitch
November 28, 2018 //
3

John Thompson writes here about the surprising victory of Kendra Horn in a Congressional district that had been gerrymandered to remain permanently Republican. I thank John for telling me about Kendra Horn, who is a supporter of public education. On his recommendation and after a review of her website, I was happy to endorse her. When so many political races are decided by razor-thin margins, every endorsement counts. I would like to think that my endorsement caused a few pro-public education voters to pay attention to Kendra Horn. Thompson describes a meeting of the Oklahoma Conservative Political Action Committee, which is horrifying and fascinating in its openly expressed nativism and anti-Semitism, as well as its contempt for public schools and teachers. The feverish and overwrought fear of “socialism” in this very conservative state, whose legislature has long been a subsidiary of the oil and gas industry, is surprising.

John Thompson writes:


Julian Castro says that voters want authentic candidates. America may not need traditional politicians. But we need traditionally sane leaders.

Oklahoma’s election of Kendra Horn to congress is more than one of the nation’s “biggest lurch to the left in America’s 2018 midterm election.” It is also a case study in what it takes to turn a historic Republican district, made safer by extreme gerrymandering, into a sane Blue island in a sea of Trumpism. And its lessons are relevant across the nation.

As political scientist Mike Males says about Oklahoma County:

‘The gerrymandered district combining once-Republican Oklahoma City with two reliably GOP rural counties, went for Donald Trump by 13 points in the 2016 presidential election. It handily elected Republicans to Congress since 1975, including two-term incumbent Steve Russell by margins topping 20 points.’ Fivethirtyeight.com gave Republicans 6-in-7 odds of 2018 triumph.

On the other hand, the Oklahoma Conservative Political Action Committee (OCPAC) has a different view. Although it did not mention Diane Ravitch’s endorsement of Horn, Oklahoma rightwingers have been blaming Jewish billionaires like George Kaiser and Mike Bloomberg. In a recent meeting caught on youtube, scorn was expressed about the “Jerusalem news media,” prompting laughter.

Although they used questionable terminology, the conservative OCPAC started with a valid point. Oklahoma City has attracted large numbers of young professionals. The economic take-off (in a state that has mostly been stagnating,) has been a “magnet for liberals” from east and west coasts. According to one speaker, these “inplants” have prompted something that I have never seen, local television news’ nonstop celebration of pop culture, millennial opinions, and the “feelings” of young people.

Other newcomers, immigrants, were said to be “good neighbors and workers.” But they tell pollsters that they are “for the people” and that is “socialism.” So immigrants are “not bad people necessarily” but they “don’t make good citizens.”

However, OCPAC says that Oklahoma has been producing homegrown socialists. For years, teachers have been “indoctrinating children, making leftists of our children.” Their president said, “Government education is the bane of American civilization.” In 2018, Oklahoma almost saw a “total takeover of state government by the education industry – teachers.” Teachers supposedly registered Republican enmasse in a campaign to “take over” the party.

OCPAC also protests a “massive purge of conservatives” that is fed by dark money, but being implemented by local socialists. Not everyone at the meeting believed that teachers were leading this “massacre.” Former Rep. Mike Reynolds said that educators are just “useful idiots” for trial lawyers who hope to repeal tort reform as they then run the state. Reynolds said that he was expressing opinions, not proven facts, but he believes this assault on conservatives is a part of the efforts of billionaires still angry that the University of Oklahoma returned stolen Nazi art, purchased by a rich Jew. The return was supposedly opposed by Kaiser and an unnamed billionaire.

Given these threats, it was explained that Republicans “can’t leave Oklahoma County whole.” It was argued that 2022 redistricting must incorporate voters from three congressional districts. As in the good old days, Democratic voters in Oklahoma City need to be dumped into districts bordering on Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado!

On the other hand, Males’ analysis of Horn’s victory casts doubt on whether gerrymandering will be enough to defeat Horn, a likable, warm, and diplomatic candidate who walked her district. He explains that between 2014 and 2018, “voter turnout in the district surged by 23 percent for Republicans and a volcanic 110 percent for Democrats, with every precinct showing substantially increased Democratic voting.” He found that Russell won most of the city’s “40 rural White precincts, hard-core Trump territory,” but they became significantly more Democratic. He reports, “Of the 80,000 new voters, Democrats won two-thirds in rural areas, three-fourths in Oklahoma City, and 88 percent in the suburbs.”

Yes, Males shows that millennial districts voted Democratic by margins exceeding 75 percent but he also found that “gated, guarded Gaillardia, 15 miles from downtown, overwhelmingly White and wealthy, tripled its vote for Democrats, while the district’s two arch-red rural counties doubled their Democratic votes.”

I wonder what the defeated congressman Steve Russell thinks about the older population in Gaillardia who voted for the personable Democrat who enjoys listening. Throughout his campaign, Russell couldn’t hide his contempt for those who disagree with him. After the election, he blamed his loss on Millennials and then said about that generation, “time and experience will engage this important population with the values that matter as they marry and raise families. I am optimistic about the potential of our country’s future but saddened by its self-indulgence and lack of respect for one another.”

When asked by NPR’s Robin Young about Russell’s rude words, which she called “a bit of a ‘dis’,” Horn brushed off his animosity and said that we won because we engaged all types of people of all ages, “we changed the way campaigns are run here.”

https://www.thelostogle.com/2018/11/14/steve-russell-blames-campaign-loss-on-millennials/

http://www.wbur.org/npr/670077244/kendra-horn-oklahoma-5th-district

Categories Bigotry, Oklahoma, Republicans

Oklahoma: More Reasons to Vote for Kendra Horn for Congress

By dianeravitch
October 30, 2018 //
4

John Thompson, retired teacher in Oklahoma and frequent contributor to this and other blogs, writes about the Congressional race between Democrat Kendra Horn and Republican incumbent Steve Russell. As you will note, Russell is an extremist on the subject of guns. He opposes any kind of regulation of guns:

Diane, thank you for endorsing Kendra Horn for Oklahoma’s 5th congressional district. And thank you for exposing America’s “Fascist Underbelly,” while condemning the latest mass murder.

Horn’s opponent, Congressman Steve Russell, brags on his web site that he is “a career soldier, collector of military firearms and is the only one on Capitol Hill who is an active firearms manufacturer.” He opposes “knee-jerk” legislative reactions such as banning AR 15s, like the one Robert Bowers used when murdering 11 worshipers at the Tree of Life synagogue.

The Las Vegas mass murder of 59 people prompted Russell to say, “We must never allow some deceptive, fabricated movement on civil rights take away the Bill of Rights. The people of the United States are sovereign through its republican form of government–not the mob.”

Russell says that mass shootings are a “cultural thing.” The automatic weapons are “tools,” and we have an “inalienable and God-given right” to bear them. He also raised the specter of the U.S. becoming Australia and confiscating guns.

Russell’s campaign blamed Democrats like Rep. Maxine Waters, after she was the apparent target of two bombs, for encouraging liberals to “intimidate and harass Republicans.”

During a recent debate with Kendra Horn, who supports such sensible gun control policies, Russell again opposed the banning of bump stocks or high-capacity magazines.

So, what will Russell, the gun maker, say about the latest hate crime?

When Russell isn’t condemning his opponent as a socialist or the Democrats as a mob, he claims that we must restore civility. When he isn’t blaming our nation for mishandling the Kavanaugh hearings, while denying that the Republicans mishandled them, and blaming Democrats for “fighting against” America, he says we must “turn away wrath.”

So, what will Congressman Russell do to deter the series of violent, wrathful actions that were last displayed this weekend?

Categories Guns, Oklahoma

I Endorse Kendra Horn for Election to Congress in Oklahoma

By dianeravitch
October 26, 2018 //
0

The issues are clear in the contest between Republican Congressman Steve Russell and his Democratic challenger Kendra Horn in the Fifth District of Oklahoma: He is a Trump supporter; she will protect health care, education and Social Security. Mitch McConnell already made clear that last December’s tax cuts for the rich and corporations blew a huge hole in the deficit and the Republican party plans to make significant cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Democrats must gain control of the House to block cuts to our nation’s social safety net.

If you care about American public education, vote for Kendra Horn.

If you want to protect our citizens from policies that make the rich richer and everyone else suffer, please vote for Kendra Horn.

The future of our democracy is on the ballot. Please vote.

Categories Democracy, Oklahoma

John Thompson: The Negative Effects of Corporate Reform and Disinvestment in Education

By dianeravitch
October 21, 2018 //
12

John Thompson, historian and teacher, lives in Oklahoma.


The Oklahoma press is focusing on the state’s low level of college readiness as measured by the ACT test, 16 percent, in comparison to the national rate of 27 percent. The state known for dramatic cuts in education funding is ranked 19th in the nation with an average composite score of 19.3. But it is missing the big picture.

https://www.tulsaworld.com/news/education/college-readiness-rate-remains-level-in-oklahoma-s-second-year/article_f94e7779-4328-56b4-8b21-a1390a634d4b.html

The average ACT composite for my old school, Centennial, is 14.8, which is above average for the high-poverty neighborhood schools in Oklahoma City and Tulsa. Even when we were ranked last in the state, our ACT scores were significantly higher. Since I retired, Centennial received a $5 million School Improvement Grant. I believe that its ACT decline is just one example of evidence explaining how and why tens of billions of dollars of corporate school reform drove meaningful learning out of many inner city schools.

The Latest ACT Scores for Public and Private High Schools

The important question is what caused the national decline. Retired PBS education reporter John Merrow argues these ACT-takers “have had 12 or 13 years of test-centric education, and the kids coming up behind them have also endured what the ‘school reformers’ designed.” He also asks, “How much more evidence do we need of the folly of ‘No Child Left Behind’ and Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s ‘Race to the Top’ before we take back our schools?”

As Ye Sow, So Shall Ye Reap…..

Since reformers sought to improve low-performing schools, it is significant that Merrow cites the ACT report on recent outcomes:

A higher percentage of students this year than in recent years fell to the bottom of the preparedness scale, showing little or no readiness for college coursework. Thirty-five percent of 2018 graduates met none of the ACT College Readiness Benchmarks, up from 31% in 2014 and from 33% last year.

Click to access National-CCCR-2018.pdf

All types of researchers are contributing to the autopsies being performed on data-driven, competition-driven reform. And many of us are especially intrigued by the analyses of corporate school reformers on why test-driven accountability, the expansion of charter schools, and the quest to “build a better teacher” failed. The latest, by the Gates Foundation’s Tom Kane, is very illustrative. Kane acknowledges that media coverage has declared his “teacher quality” effort a failure, but he mostly blamed educators.

Develop and Validate — Then Scale

Kane is typical of many reformers who say the big mistake was rapidly scaling up their teacher evaluation and test-driven accountability models. Kane forgets, however, that he, Bill Gates, other venture philanthropists, and Arne Duncan were the ones who imposed the rapid scaling up of their untested hypotheses.

This leads to my hypothesis about the Tulsa Public Schools, which is led by corporate reformer Deborah Gist and a team of Broad Academy-trained administrators. It may offer a case study in the causes of the reform debacle. The TPS has the nation’s 7th lowest rate of student performance growth from 3rd to 8th grade.

Student growth: What’s the matter with Tulsa?

Tulsa has a lot of advantages due to the Kaiser Foundation’s science-based early education efforts, and it used to have better student outcomes than the OKCPS. Tulsa has received millions of dollars in funding for it value-added teacher evaluations, “personalized” learning, and other corporate reforms. The cornerstone of their approach was the termination and “counseling out” of experienced educators, and demanding compliance to their new model.

https://www.tulsaworld.com/news/education/tulsa-public-schools-teacher-evaluation-system-is-changing-culture-has/article_6be79be3-d934-5d4a-98ef-5ec90bcea9e9.html

Of course, no single piece of data can prove that Tulsa’s experiments failed for any single reason, but a new database created by ProPublica and Chalkbeat provides valuable new information. Their research shows that many of the biggest experiments, costing hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars and that were once proclaimed as successes, actually increased the achievement gap. Despite false claims to the contrary, many districts that committed to corporate reforms, and often claimed that they improved student performance, actually practiced mass suspensions of poor, black students. And there seems to be an unmistakable correlation between their commitment to teacher quality experiments and the increase of inexperienced teachers.

https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2018/10/16/chalkbeat-propublica-collaboration-education-inequity-data-miseducation/
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/newark/2018/10/16/in-newark-reporting-lapses-hide-thousands-of-student-suspensions-from-public-view/

So, how much of the decline in Oklahoma ACT scores is attributable to the top-down reforms funded by the federal government, Bill Gates, and other edu-philanthropists?

It doesn’t rise to the level of “proof,” but it is noteworthy that black TPS students are 2.2 years behind their white peers. That is .5 a year worse than the OKCPS gap. (And only 18 percent of TPS students took those college readiness tests, in contrast to the OKCPS where 29 percent took the ACT or SAT.)

https://projects.propublica.org/miseducation/district/4030240

Nearly a quarter of OKCPS teachers are categorized as inexperienced. The same percentage applies to Centennial, and whenever I visit my old school I hear more concerns about the ways that teacher turnover undermines school improvement.

Nearly 1/3rd of Tulsa teachers are inexperienced.

As more data arrives, we will be able to evaluate whether the multi-million Tulsa/Gates Foundation teacher quality initiative drove down the quality of teaching and learning. But this much is obvious. It is easier for competition-driven reformers to suspend poor students than it is for them to increase student learning.

And the “exiting” of large numbers of veteran educators was seen as a feature, as opposed to a flaw in their model. Now we know it is much easier to drive teachers out of the profession than it is to social-engineer better teachers.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Funding, Oklahoma, Testing
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