Archives for category: Privatization

Shawgi Tell is a professor of education at Nazareth College in New York.

He points out that “More than 765 Charter Schools Have Closed in Three Years.”

This is what Disrupters refer to as “high-quality seats.” Here today, gone tomorrow.

Currently, about 3.2 million students are enrolled in roughly 7,000 privately-operated charter schools across the country. This represents less than 7% of all students and 7% of all schools in the country.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, more than 765 charter schools closed between 2014-15 and 2016-2017, leaving thousands of families stressed, abandoned, dislocated,and angry. This figure represents more than one out of ten charter schools in the country by today’s numbers. The real closure figure is likely higher. To be sure, more than 3,000 charter schools have closed in under three decades.

The top three reasons privately-operated charter schools close are financial malfeasance, poor academic performance, and low enrollment.

With regard to academic performance, the Washington Post (November 1, 2019) reminds us that:

When you take all charters and all public schools into consideration, students at charters do worse than those at public schools. According to the Department of Education’s National Assessment of Educational Progress, public school students in fourth, eighth and 12th grades outperform charter school students in math, reading and science.

It is also worth recalling that the vast majority of high-performing nations do not have charter schools.

Today, nearly 60% of charter schools are in urban settings where schools tend to be under-funded, over-tested, constantly-shamed, and attended mostly by poor and low-income minority students. Charter school advocates prefer to target urban schools because this is where they can make the most profit given economies of scale and other factors.

While choice” has worked out well for major owners of capital, what good is “choice” when it cannot deliver stable, reliable, high-quality education free of corruption, segregation, and overpaid administrators? How does funneling billions of dollars annually from public schools to unstable privately-operated charter schools that frequently perform poorly help the economy, education, or society? Do pay-the-rich schemes like charter schools advance the national interest?

There is no justification for the existence of privately-operated non-profit and for-profit charter schools. They do not provide a net public benefit. Endless news reports show that charter schools are always mired in scandal and controversy. It is time to stop bashing public education, reject the hype surrounding charter schools, fully fund all public schools, and vest real decision-making power in the hands of the public. The rich must be deprived of their ability to privatize public education with impunity. The content, purpose, and direction of education must not be in the hands of privatizers, neoliberals, and corporate school reformers.

 

Nancy Bailey read a list of organizations who were blaming teachers for not adhering to the “science” of reading and thus blaming teachers for NAEP reading scores.

She got steamed and pointed out that none of these individuals or organizations criticizing teachers are known as teachers themselves.

She got so steamed that she names names in this post. 

These are the organizations, she says, that have the sheer audacity to blame teachers for what they themselves can’t do!

They write the policies that constrain teachers but take no responsibility when their policies fail.

Busybodies! When are they held accountable?

After listing the groups, she concludes:

This conversation should take place, because something is wrong when parents are unhappy with their child’s schooling. It isn’t a debate that will be won by yelling at each other on social media, but by working together at the school level.

It should include a state department of education in each state that investigates problems and isn’t about getting rid of public education. The U.S. Department of Education should also be working to better address the controversy surrounding reading and what’s behind denying students with reading disabilities their IDEA rights.

Universities should review how they teach reading, but they also shouldn’t be forced by these groups to destroy reading practices that have worked for years.

It is, however, difficult to do this at this time. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and the previous education secretaries, never taught, never studied reading in a university setting or worked to remediate student difficulties, and have themselves been about the business of destroying schools and de-professionalizing the teaching profession.

If you think the NAEP scores are poor, look at the groups mentioned here. It has been a rigged game for years!

Campbell Brown was a CNN anchor. Then she became the new face of the Education Disruption movement after the disappearance of Michelle Rhee. Brown advocated for charters and vouchers and she opposed teachers’ unions and teacher tenure. She claimed in various articles in the New York City press that the schools were overrun by teachers who were sexual predators, protected by the union. She created a news site called “The 74” to express her views; it was funded by the usual cast of billionaires (Walton, Bloomberg, Gates, Broad, etc.). She is anti-public school, anti-union, anti-tenure and pro-privatization. When Betsy DeVos was chosen as Secretary of Education, Campbell Brown acknowledged that she was a personal friend and that Betsy funded “The 74,” while Brown served on the board of Betsy’s pro-voucher American Federation for Children.

Those with a longish memory might recall that Brown started the “Partnership for Educational Justice” to file court cases in several states in an effort to destroy teacher tenure–a copycat of the Vergara lawsuit in California, which was eventually tossed out by the state’s highest court. Thus far, all of the PEJ lawsuits have also been thrown out by state judges who said that teacher tenure was unrelated to test scores. (There are probably more tenured teachers in affluent districts than in low-performing, high-poverty districts.)

Then Campbell Brown was chosen by Mark Zuckerberg to be in charge of media relations for Facebook.

Popular Information revealed the multiple roles that Campbell Brown is now playing.

The 74 = has heaped scorn on Elizabeth Warren since she released her K-12 plan, which proposes an end to federal support for new charter schools.

The 74 has (not surprisingly) lavished praise on Betsy DeVos.

Now Brown is in charge of deciding what news gets featured on Facebook.

While Brown served as editor-in-chief of The 74, the site featured at least 11 pieces from Eric Owens, an editor at The Daily Caller. Owens “has a long history of penning racially insensitive, sexist, and transphobic attacks on students and teachers.” 

Owens, for example, wrote in The Daily Caller that white privilege is a “radical and bizarre political theory that white people enjoy a bunch of wonderful privileges while everyone else suffers under the yoke of invisible oppression.” In another Daily Caller column, Owens called college students “delicate, immature wusses who become traumatized, get the vapors and seek professional counseling any time they face adversity.”

Owens is also obsessed with female teachers who sexually assault male students, repeatedly writing exploitative stories about the incidents.

After Brown joined Facebook, The Daily Caller was named an official Facebook fact-checking partner, despite The Daily Caller’s history of inaccurate reporting. 

Brown thinks Breitbart is a “quality” news source

Brown’s role with The 74 raises further questions about the ideological underpinnings of Facebook’s nascent news tab, which has not been rolled out to all users. Brown’s team elected to include Breitbart — an unreliable and noxious right-wing site that was literally caught laundering white nationalist talking points —  among the 200 “quality” sources included in the launch. 

Of course, Mark Zuckerberg hates Elizabeth Warren too, because she has talked about breaking up the big tech monopolies, such as Facebook, and taxing the personal wealth of billionaires.

Political Morning Education reports a big event in D.C. tonight where partisans of the test-and-punish education policies of the past twenty years will gather to rededicate themselves to their failed programs. Will these advocates for accountability accept any accountability for the misguided practices they have foisted on American education? Will they hold themselves accountable for the billions of dollars spent on testing and privatization that should have been spent on reducing class sizes and raising teachers salaries and opening health clinics in schools? Wouldn’t it be something if they invited someone like Jonathan Kozol or Anthony Cody to explain why NCLB and RTTT failed and how to have a better approach to teaching and learning other than carrots and sticks?

 

BUSHES SPOTLIGHT READING, LITERACY AMID GRIM ASSESSMENTS: Events starting tonight at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts will bring together members of the Bush family, best-selling authors and entertainers, philanthropists, and education and business leaders to celebrate reading and mark the foundation’s 30th anniversary.

— “I believe that literacy is an essential foundation for democracy,” former first lady Laura Bush said in a statement provided to POLITICO. Bush, one of tonight’s honorary co-chairs, will deliver remarks during a program that will include a special performance by country music singer Tim McGraw and Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Jon Meacham, co-authors of “Songs of America: Patriotism, Protest, and the Music that Made a Nation.”

— The events, including the foundation’s inaugural summit on adult literacy on Wednesday, coincide with grim results on the Nation’s Report Card and an announcement today from the Collaborative for Student Success about an effort with 11 other organizations to address the results.

— Among the organizations are The Education Trust, the National Urban League, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the National Association of Elementary School Principals. They’re calling for, among other things, increasing federal investment in evidence-based, comprehensive literacy efforts at the state and local levels.

— “The persistent gaps in reading achievement for students from low-income backgrounds, students of color, English learners, and students with disabilities on the NAEP require urgent action,” said John B. King Jr., former Education secretary and president and CEO of The Education Trust.

Grassroots Arkansas reports that the teachers of Little Rock will strike this Thursday. It will be a one-day strike. The State Board of Education (a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Walton family) stripped the local union of its collective bargaining rights and is trying to destroy and privatize public education in that city. For the billionaire Waltons, Little Rock is the petri dish that is near at hand. They have so many petri dishes, all of which have failed. Why don’t they leave this small but historic district alone? (Answer: Because the Waltons want everything; having $150 billions has made them willful and arrogant.) The state took control of the district in 2015 and has agreed to return limited control, with a powerless board still controlled by the state.

Little Rock educators have announced a strike this Thursday, November 14, to demand that the state stop its re-segregation plan, return democracy through full local control of the LRSD, and recognize the union’s bargaining rights. Our educators and students need all of us to stand up for them before unlicensed subs and private companies complete the destruction and further segregation of our public education system.

There are several ways that you can support students and teachers. If you are a caregiver, please do whatever you can to keep your students home on Thursday, or send them to one of the childcare sites to be announced soon. The money follows the students, and the only power we have is if the students stay home. If they go to school, they will be babysat by unlicensed subs. Other ways you can support include:

  • Donate and share the Bread for Ed campaign to feed kids while the schools are shut down.

  • Tuesday and Wednesday: Pass out flyers at schools during drop-off and pickup times. Go by the AEA building at 1500 W 4th Street or call them at (501)375-4611 to see which schools most need coverage.

  • Tuesday and Wednesday: 4:00-7:00 Sign making at the AEA building. 1500 W 4th St by the Capitol.

  • Thursday: Picketing at schools from 7-9:30. Picket the State Board of Education meeting at 11:00. Sign up here.

Together, we can reclaim democracy and a world-class education for ALL students!

STRIKE DATE SET IN ARKANSAS: The Little Rock Education Association is calling for one locally elected city school board with full decision-making authority following the state’s takeover of the district in January 2015. The union planned the strike for the day of the next state board of education meeting, when the district is on the agenda.

— The state board last month voted to stop recognizing the union as a bargaining agent for its members. The state board also voted to return control of Little Rock schools to a locally elected school board by 2020, but limited its authority.

— “They specifically stated that the school board, once elected, would not be able to reinstate our recognition, nor would they be able to hire or fire a superintendent and that the commissioner of education would still have veto power over any decisions that the state or that the school board makes,” Knapp Gordon said.

— The announcement said the union is working with #OneLRSD to stop Gov. Asa Hutchinson and his appointed state board from “segregating the city’s public schools.” The board last month backed away from a plan to divide the district under separate governing systems amid complaints that it would segregate the district. But Knapp Gordon said “by retaining control over the district, they still get to make those decisions that will lead to the resegregation of our school district.”

Jane Nylund, parent activist in Oakland, wrote the following warning after reading about the ouster of the Disrupters in Denver. Parents and activists and concerned citizens must organize and oust the agents of Disruption:

 

Oakland also must flip 4 board seats next year. The Walton-bought board has recently closed two schools, Roots and Kaiser Elementary, and there is talk of accelerating the “Blueprint process”, which is basically a plan to close and consolidate schools. Oakland’s portfolio model, which was only supposed to close “low performing” schools (nearly all of which were privatized into charters), has now morphed into the Citywide plan, in which no school is safe from the threat of closure. Kaiser was an exemplary model for a popular, well-supported, diverse neighborhood public school that attracted families both within and outside its boundaries. It also supported a significant number of LGBT families. It’s enrollment had been steady for years. Its closure (and planned consolidation with Sankofa, a struggling elementary school several miles away with a freeway in between) means that the beautiful piece of property where Kaiser is located (with SF bay views) will either be sold or handed over to a charter. Kaiser’s closure was a sacrifice, a political pawn in the school closure game, to show that the school board can be “bold” and not just close schools in high-needs neighborhoods. Look at us, we can close anything, and we will! This is the not-so-new normal for OUSD.

While we are on the subject of the District of Columbia, here’s an interesting tidbit.

Despite the drumbeat about “waiting lists,” charter enrollment declined, and enrollment in public schools increased. 

The numbers are not large but they seem to reflect a trend. Charter enrollment also declined in Michigan, DeVos’s domain.

Maybe parents are getting tired of schools that open and close like day lilies. There is something to be said for stability and experience.

At the same time, the traditional public school system experienced a 4 percent increase in enrollment, surpassing the 50,000-student threshold for the first time since 2006, figures from the Office of the State Superintendent of Education show.

Overall, enrollment in the District’s public schools — including charter and traditional public campuses — grew by 1.7 percent to 94,603 students in the 2019-2020 academic year, with the traditional system accounting for 54 percent of the city’s public school students…

The decline in charter school enrollment follows a rough year for the sector, with four campuses not reopening because of finances or poor academic performance. One of those schools, Democracy Prep Congress Heights, served 759 students.

A fifth school — AppleTree Early Learning in Southwest Washington — served 97 students and did not reopen because it could not secure a building.

And the D.C. Public Charter School Board, which is charged with overseeing the sector, said National Collegiate Preparatory Public Charter High must close at the end of the 2019-2020 academic year because of lackluster academic performance.

Valerie Jablow is a parent in D.C. whose blog follows the ethical scandals of public officials and the charter industry in her hometown.

This one is a doozy.

It is so crazy that I can’t summarize it.

Somewhere in this Pink Panther-style story are the moneymakers.

The guys who finance the real estate: Turner Agassi.

Tennis star Andre Agassi opened his own charter school in Las Vegas. He promised that every student would be accepted by a four-year college. Agassi donated $18 million to his school. The school was a disaster. Staff turnover was high. It was the worst performing charter in the state. It charter was turned over to NYC-based Democracy Prep.

Then equity investor Turner Capital offered to create a partnership with Agassi to build charter schools. That’s a lucrative business. Turner and Agassi hit the jackpot.

Disruption!  That’s the means and the end!

 

Charter promoters have long argued that traditional forms of accountability like auditing and financial and academic oversight are unnecessary because the magic of the market will hold them accountable. If parents enroll their children, that is all the accountability that is necessary.

Peter Greene explains in this article why the market does not create accountability for charter schools. 

It has been a rough day at my house. The IRS is auditing me and needs me to send them money now. My computer has a virus. My Microsoft Windows is expired and will shut down soon. And if I don’t re-enter my personal information, my email, Netflix, and bank accounts will all be shut down. The only good news is that I still have a chance to buy great insurance, and I’m still waiting to hear back from that Nigerian prince. 
Why do phone and online scammers keep at it, long after the vast majority of folks have heard about the most common scams, and even your mother knows not to say “yes” to a robocaller? Why don’t these scammers think, “Time to change my business model?” Because if scammers get a return on even one hit out of 10,000, that’s more than enough to keep them in business.
Charter school advocates have long argued that one reason that charters don’t need much formal government oversight is that they are subject to a greater accountability, that they must answer to parents who can “vote with their feet.” But the feet of charter parents don’t exert very much pressure.
The vast majority of charter school operators have nothing in common with phone scammers, but the same basic market principle applies.
Take, for instance, the Success Academy chain of New York City. New York City schools have an enrollment of roughly 1.1 million students; Success Academy has roughly 18,000, plus a waiting list. Over 1 million students have already voted with their feet against Success Academy, but there are no signs that SA head Eva Moskowitz is worried about tweaking the school’s approach to entice some of those million students to “vote” differently. She doesn’t need them. Nor do I suspect she’d bat an eye if even a dozen parents came to her and said, “Change this rule or we are pulling our kids out of here.” 
What do you think she would say?

 

 

Bill Phillis, retired deputy commissioner of the state education department, is a watchdog for Ohio schools, especially finances.

Charter schools in Ohio are called “community schools.”

He writes:

In 2014, the State Auditor’s office conducted an unannounced head count in 30 Ohio site-based charter schools. One charter had no students or 100% absenteeism. Eight had an absentee rate of more than 50 percent. Thirteen had an absentee rate of more than 30 percent.
More than a decade ago Scripps Howard News Service did a head count in several Ohio charters and found that as high as 66 percent of the students in one school were absent. Their report, Ghost Schools, was turned over to the Attorney General’s office but there was no public follow up.
The charter experiment should have been shut down at least 15 years ago.
William L. Phillis | Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding | 614.228.6540 | ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net| www.ohiocoalition.org