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School Libraries Matter!

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2012 //
30

Read here about the “Manchester Miracle,” about an elementary school in Pennsylvania that had only 40 fiction books on its shelves.

The community came together, renovated the library, and stocked its shelves with books.

And then there is the bad news. In Pittsburgh, only 14 of 51 schools have a full-time librarian. Most librarians spend only one day a week at each school.

This is the part I don’t understand.

When I went to public school in Houston many years ago, every school I attended had a library and a librarian. Some had more than one.

Our society is now immeasurably richer than it was then.

Why can’t every school have a library and a librarian?

Why don’t hedge fund managers support libraries?

Andrew Carnegie did, and it made him a hero for all time, enabling people to forget about labor practices at his steel mills. So today, because of his benefactions, he is remembered for his gift of libraries and literacy, not the brutal suppression of the Homestead Strike in 1892.

If the hedge fund managers and equity investors supported school libraries, we would think of them kindly and the memory of 2008 would fade.

Hello, Democrats for Education Reform! How about Democrats for School Libraries?

Categories Pennsylvania

The Pennsylvania Cyber Gold Rush

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2012 //
1

Pennsylvania has 16 full-time cyber charter schools. Of the twelve that have been around long enough to report on test scores, only one made AYP this year. Last year, two made AYP. Eight are in corrective action status. None has ever been closed. The other four were authorized earlier this year.

Last summer, the offices of the state’s largest cyber charter school was raided by the FBI, which apparently had many questions about where the money is going in an enterprise that collects more than $100 million every year. The board of that school fired its top staff but the investigation continues.

A review of the cyber charters by CREDO at Stanford University concluded that they get terrible results: their students have low scores, low graduation rates, and high attrition rates. A spokesperson for CREDO said: “whatever cyberschools are doing in PA is definitely not working and should not be replicated.”

But the cyber charters just keep growing, as they spend more and more money to recruit students and more and more money to lobby legislators.

So what does the future hold for cyber charters in Pennsylvania in light of evidence that cyber charters get poor education results and need greater oversight?

Eight more cyber charter schools just applied to the state for authorization.

The state auditor complained that the cyber charters overbill the state.

But aside from his report, has the governor or legislative leaders or the state commissioner of education expressed concern about the growth of the state’s lowest performing education sector?

Are you kidding? This is not about improving education. It’s not about “the kids.” This is the edu-business.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, For-Profit, Pennsylvania, Privatization

Charter Sponsor Is Very Successful

By dianeravitch
October 29, 2012 //
6

Vavan Gureghian runs a successful charter school called the Chester Community Charter School. The school is nonprofit, but Mr. Gureghian supplies its good and services through his for-profit company and collects millions of dollars as a management fee. Meanwhile the local Chester Upland public schools–whose funds pay for the students in the charter school–is in bankruptcy and under the control of a Governor-appointed “chief recovery officer.” Poor Chester Upland has been controlled by the state for most of the past decade,  yet gets blamed for the fiscal insolvency that the state has deepened and may now use as an excuse to eliminate its public schools.

The following is copied from the newsletter of the Keystone State Education Coalition, which sends out a daily newsletter with news from Pennsylvania:

“Vahan Gureghian was Governor Corbett’s largest individual campaign donor at $384,000.  His Charter School Management Company runs the Chester Community Charter School, Pennsylvania’s largest brick and mortar charter.  Chester is one of Pennsylvania’s poorest urban school districts. 

Does the $28.9 million noted below represent taxpayer funds that were NOT spent in the classrooms of Chester Upland?  We don’t know, because Mr. Gureghian has been fighting a Right-to-Know request for the past several years.  A controversial provision that would have exempted him from the Right-to-Know law was removed from SB1115, the charter school bill that was defeated last Wednesday.

http://homesoftherich.net/2012/01/pennsylvania-couple-building-20000-square-foot-palm-beach-mansion/”

Please open the link, here too.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Pennsylvania, Poverty, Privatization

Pennsylvania Blogger: “Charters Are Cash Cows”

By dianeravitch
October 24, 2012 //
2

I have had some good debates with friends and colleagues who support charter schools. I think there is a role for them in meeting needs that public schools cannot meet: charter schools for the autistic, charter schools for dropouts, charter schools are kids who utterly lack motivation. Charters should boast of how many low-performing kids they have recruited, not their test scores. When their tests scores are high, it usually means they are skimming or excluding the very students they should be seeking out. Charters might also be a way to test innovations, but more typically they are boot camps, which is not at all innovative. If they exist to innovate, they should be committed to collaboration with public schools, not competition. But that is not what charter schools today are about. They are about winning. And as this Pennsylvania blogger explains, some are about money.

Charters are Cash Cows

— OCTOBER 22, 2012

Charter schools are cash cows feeding at the public trough. Oh, there are a few good ones here and there, to be sure. But if there was ever any doubt that charter schools have become Big Business, take a look at the list of the largest campaign contributors in Pennsylvania. Three of the top ten on a new “Power Players” report are throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars into state politics to gain favorable legislation for charter schools and we need to be asking why. [Public Source, Power Players report]

Weighing in at #5 is Van Gureghian, who founded Charter School Management Inc. back in 1999 to run a school in Chester, PA, a struggling former industrial town near Philadelphia. Today Gureghian’s company operates 150 charter schools in nine states, and that first school now has half of the district’s student enrollment and is the state’s largest charter school. Gureghian was Gov. Corbett’s single largest campaign donor and served on his education transition team. This is the same guy who is fighting the state’s Right to Know laws to keep from disclosing his salary – which is public knowledge for other public school administrators – while he recently bought two Florida beachfront lots for $28.9 million. He and his wife, another Charter School Management Inc. employee, plan to build a 20,000 square foot “French-inspired Monte Carlo estate.” [Palm Beach Daily News, 2011-11-18; Also see “Soaking the Public”]

At #8 and #10 on the list are Joel Greenberg and Arthur Dantchik. Public Source, which put together the report, notes that these two “act as one when making political contributions,” and that if we “consider them as a contributing team, you must include Jeff Yass,” who would be #11 on this list. Greenberg, Dantchik, and Yass went to college together and are founding partners of Susquehanna International Group, a financial broker-dealer in Philadelphia.

Greenberg is on the board of American Federation for Children, a national group with mega-billionaire backers supporting state vouchers for private school students. Dantchik is on the board of the Institute for Justice, a law firm that promotes school choice and Yass is on the board of the Cato Institute, a think tank dedicated to limited government and free markets. [Public Source, Power Players report] In 2010, these three men started Students First PAC to channel millions of their dollars, plus those from out of state donors, into races of pro-voucher candidates. (For more on the American Federation for Children and the Students First PAC, see “It’s All About the Money, Money, Money”.)

For those of you keeping track, that makes four of Pennsylvania’s biggest campaign donors so far this year with school privatization at the top of their to-do lists. Why? Lest you think these men are dabbling in education for the sake of students, take a closer look at the Big Business of charter schools. Back in August, CNBC interviewed the CEO of a major investment company who clearly explained why charter schools are such a great moneymaker. David Brain heads Entertainment Properties Trust, which owns movie theaters, destination recreation sites, and charter schools in 34 states.

When the interviewer asked why people should add charter schools to their investment portfolios, he replied:

“Well I think it’s a very stable business, very recession-resistant. It’s a very high-demand product. There’s 400,000 kids on waiting lists for charter schools … the industry’s growing about 12-14% a year. So it’s a high-growth, very stable, recession-resistant business. It’s a public payer, the state is the payer … if you do business with states with solid treasuries, then it’s a very solid business.”

The anchor also asked if he could buy one type of real estate asset right now, what would it be, and Brain answered:

“Well, probably the charter school business. We said it’s our highest growth and most appealing sector right now of the portfolio. It’s the most high in demand, it’s the most recession-resistant. And a great opportunity set with 500 schools starting every year. It’s a two and a half billion dollar opportunity set in rough measure annually.” [CNBC, 8-15-12]

Brain also told a nice whopper when the anchor asked him if there was any investment risk due to some public backlash against using taxpayer money to pay for charter schools. He claimed, “Most of the studies have charter schools at even or better than district public education.” Actually, most of the studies have shown the opposite: charter schools consistently rank at even or worse – sometimes much worse – than traditional public schools. For example, the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University found that students in every single Pennsylvania cyber charter school performed “significantly worse” in reading and math than their peers in conventional public schools. [Stanford/CREDO report summary, 2011] That’s a 100% failure rate. (See “Dueling Rallies” for complete details on charter school performance research.)

With such dismal results, investors really ought to be asking why Gov. Corbett’s administration keeps approving new charter school applications. Cyber charters in particular are charging taxpayers far more per student than it actually costs to educate them – to the tune ofone million dollars per day sucked from our public coffers into the pockets of charter school operators. (See “One Million Per Day”) Pennsylvania already has 16 cyber charter schools – including four approved just this past summer – giving us one of the highest concentrations in the country. Yet the Department of Education just scheduled hearings on eight new cyber charter school applications. [Post-Gazette, 10-22-12]

Gary Miron, an education professor at Western Michigan University who studies charter schools, told the Post-Gazette, “Pennsylvania, as far as I know, has the most lucrative funding for virtual schools. It’s very favorable. It doesn’t surprise me more companies and entities want to come there for virtual schooling.” [Post-Gazette, 10-22-12]

Indeed. This is not about doing what is best for students. Charter schools have become investment opportunities for the wealthy and their portfolio managers, businesses that must be protected with favorable legislation bought by strategic campaign contributions. As these charter school operators feed at the public trough, they strip our public schools of desperately needed resources. It’s time to fight back. Public education is a public good, not a cash cow.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Pennsylvania, Privatization

In Pennsylvania, A Significant Victory for Public Education

By dianeravitch
October 22, 2012 //
2

Pennsylvania legislators were moving to adopt a “charter reform” bill that would have benefited charters mightily.

In response to the loud outcry from supporters of public education, some Republican legislators switched sides at the last minute and the bill died.

There are indeed serious injustices that need to be corrected–like the outrageous over-funding of cyber charters–which cost taxpayers about $1 million a day.

This post explains why the bill failed and why it deserved to fail.

The bill will be back, and so will the supporters of public education.

Keep your eye on Pennsylvania.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, For-Profit, Pennsylvania, Privatization

Pennsylvania Slows ALEC Juggernaut

By dianeravitch
October 18, 2012 //
3

The drive to diminish local control in Pennsylvania was halted when Republicans backed away from Governor Corbett’s charter “reform” legislation. The bill would have allowed the Governor and the State Education Department to override local school boards and open charters where the local board rejected them. This is a priority for Governor Tom Corbett and for ALEC, which values privatization over local control. Apparently, some Republicans had trouble following the attack on public schools and local school boards, which are important and traditional institutions in the communities they represent. The bill would have also allowed charter operators to escape accountability and transparency in their expenditure of public funds.

I received this note from an ally in Pennsylvania, with links:

Governor Corbett of Pennsylvania had a major setback in his attempt to follow an ALEC goal of taking management of charter schools out of local control and put it in the hands of the Pennsylvania Education Department. Wednesday night the Pa. House of Representatives failed to pass what Corbett said had been his major goal of this legislative session.

Details of what happened are still coming out, but key Republicans bailed on supporting the bill. There had been growing opposition as reflected in newspaper editorials around the state.

In my opinion it is an indication that people are beginning to pay attention to ALEC’s role in state legislatures and there is growing questioning about the growth of charters and the closures of public schools..

“School Shutdowns Trigger Growing Backlash”

from Education Week

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/10/17/08closings_ep.h32.html?tkn=LNOFghds%2FMNtFT7T6uyDYx67vigamQKww0vF&cmp=clp-edweek

————

Pa. House pulls the plug on charter reform bill, killing the measure for this year
from the Harrisburg Patriot-News

“A historic charter school reform bill was all teed up for a House vote on Wednesday, but the vote never happened.
Enough House Republicans peeled away their support from the bill as the day wore on, making it apparent the measure did not have the 102 votes needed to pass. It would have been the first significant reforms to the 1997 charter law that created these independent public schools.
Concerns arose over a charter school funding study commission it would have created and other reforms it contained, said House Speaker Sam Smith, R-Jefferson.
The Senate had passed the bill on Tuesday by a 33-19 vote.”
http://tinyurl.com/9zu4zeo

Charter school bill falls apart in Pa. House
from the Pittsburg Post Gazette
“But House leaders worked into the night without calling the bill and, around 9:30 p.m., announced they would adjourn until after the election. After leaving the chamber, House Speaker Sam Smith, R-Jefferson, attributed the breakdown in part to dissatisfaction among some members with a provision establishing a commission to examine charter school funding. Some of those members wanted the Legislature to go ahead and change aspects of funding, such as that for cyber charter schools, he said.”
http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/education/charter-school-bill-falls-apart-in-pa-house-658047/#

House Speaker Smith: Too many “moving parts” derailed charters vote.
from Capitol Ideas at Allentown’s The Morning Call
“The top Republican in the state House said Wednesday that an inability to build consensus among both state lawmakers and interest groups derailed an expected vote on a charter school reform bill.
The state House broke for the year late Wednesday night without voting on the bill, which would have — among other things — allowed existing charter schools (with state oversight) to consolidate their operations. The bill would also have created a special state commission charged with studying special education funding issues.

The reform package, which cleared the state Senate on Tuesday night, was a top priority of Republican Gov. Tom Corbett.
Corbett’s spokesman, Kevin Harley, said the administration was “disappointed” by the House’s failure to vote on the reform bill and would begin work anew in January.”
http://blogs.mcall.com/capitol_ideas/2012/10/house-speaker-smith-too-many-moving-parts-derailed-charters-vote.html

Pennsylvania charter schools reform bill dies when House fails to take action
from the Delaware County Times
“Harrisburg — A closely watched proposal to rewrite the state’s charter schools law died Wednesday when the House wrapped up its two-year legislative session without putting it to a final vote.
The Senate approved the measure to toughen oversight of the publicly funded, privately run schools on Tuesday, but House Speaker Sam Smith, a Republican, said after adjournment there had not been enough time to deal with the complicated bill, and funding was a sticking point.
Neither chamber was scheduled to return to Harrisburg before the Nov. 6 election, nor do lawmakers plan to vote on any bills in the postelection period that ends Nov. 30. A new Legislature will be sworn in in January.”
http://www.delcotimes.com/articles/2012/10/18/news/doc507fc78b7c60b151104053.txt

Categories ALEC, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Pennsylvania

Vote for Richard Flarend in Pennsylvania’s 79th District

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2012 //
4

I support all candidates who support public education.

In the 79th district in Pennsylvania, there is an exceptional candidate for the state legislature.

Richard Flarend is a physicist on the faculty at Penn State Altoona who has played an active role in civic matters.

This is what he says about education:

State funded public education is in the constitution, and for good reason. We need education to provide opportunities both for kids and for adults who find themselves needing a new career. But state funded is different from state control. We don’t want a one-size-fits-all solution from Harrisburg to problems that we don’t even have in Altoona.

Our local schools in Blair County are all doing very well, have high graduation rates, and budgets under control except for the resources wasted in standardized testing. There is nothing broken that needs to be fixed by Harrisburg, except to get rid of standardized testing and No Child Left Behind.

Most important, WE MUST return the control over teacher and student evaluation to the local school district. We pay too much for testing, and data management. The tests take up too much of the school year and narrow the curriculum too much.

The state and federal departments of education should be resources for the local schools, not top-down micromanagers.

We need to mandate parental involvement.

I’m a huge supporter of GACTC, and I have taken a vocational class there myself. We need a much greater emphasis on vocational skills in today’s world.

Categories Pennsylvania

Playing Games with Data in Louisiana

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2012 //
18

Yesterday I wrote a post about how the Pennsylvania Secretary of Education was pulling a few fancy tricks to inflate the scores of charter schools. This makes it easier to claim that they are incredibly successful (when they are not) and persuade the Legislature to add many more.

But it turns out that Louisiana is even slicker than Pennsylvania when it comes to playing games with the data. One of our readers, whom I deduce is or was an employee of the Louisiana Department of Education, has the goods.

Read this post and please be sure to open the link for more chicanery in Baton Rouge. The bottom line: Now that Bobby Jindal and John White control the State Department of Education, don’t trust the data they produce.

Actually, John White and Louisiana have already perfected several of these techniques and added a few twists of their own. I’ve documented some of the tricks being used here:

Louisiana Managing Expectations and Manipulating the Public – for example: “T” isn’t for Terrible Schools, it’s for Turnaround Schools!

Basically they are defining schools they take over and/or turn over to charter operators as “Turnaround” schools for two years and don;t report any data on them. If the scores don’t improve they plan to reassign them to a new charter. Only schools that do well will ever get reported. Additionally, all of the recovery school district in New Orleans is defined as a small school district, less than 1000 students. Even though taken together they easily exceed that coun. Several of the sub-districts like Algiers have multiple sites and exceed that number, but for purposes of reporting the data for these districts LDE has decided to count the schools as their own district. I’m pretty sure even then we have one or two schools with more than 1000 students, but this has been reported by our departing accountabilty folks to USDOE with no apparent effect.

PA’s only mistake is not reporting what they were doing, USDOE doesn’t care if you cook the numbers, as long as you tell them you are I guess.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Jindal, Bobby, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Privatization, Vouchers

Pennsylvania Official Altered Test Rules to Inflate Charter Scores

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2012 //
18

The Pennsylvania Secretary of Education changed the state testing rules, without federal approval, to boost the scores of charters. The change involved treating charter schools as if they are districts, not schools. This reduced the number of charters that failed to make adequate yearly progress.

The chief legal counsel for the Pennsylvania School Boards Association said “the change might give the Legislature the false impression that charter schools outperform traditional public schools as they consider bills supported by Corbett to expand the number of charter schools and change how they are authorized in Pennsylvania.”

PSBA pointed out that the new formula overstates the performance of charters. Because of the formula, “…44 of the 77 charter schools that PDE has recently classified as having made AYP for 2011-12 in fact fell short of the targets for academic performance that other public schools had to meet, some even declining in proficiency percentages rather than making gains.”

This is the intersection of politics and education, where the data are adjusted for political ends.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Pennsylvania

Wish I Had a Newspaper Like This in My Hometown

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2012 //
17

The Mercury of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, has an editorial describing the devastating effects of budget cuts and tax caps on Pennsylvania’s public schools.

The cuts threaten the future, says the editorial. Class sizes are growing. Thousands of teachers have been laid off. On the chopping block and already cut are music and art, sports, kindergarten, early childhood education, after-school activities.

State budget cuts, combined with the transfer of public funds to charter schools and voucher schools, are eroding public education for the vast majority of the state’s children. The great many are suffering because of privatization.

What is at risk?

“Public education is the foundation of our democracy,” said William LaCoff, Owen J. Roberts School Board member. “You need an educated populace to make good decisions about the nation’s future and education is expensive. If we have no public schools, or if they are the school of last resort, not everyone is going to get an education and then we have a permanent under-class? That’s the last thing we want.”

My comment on the editorial: as privatization expands, public education will implode. And maybe that is the goal of the privatizers. As they grow, they are plundering a basic democratic institution.

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Pennsylvania, Privatization
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