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Steven Singer: Charter Schools Have Two Dads!

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2019 //
25

Steven Singer has written recently about the origins of charter schools. He insists that Albert Shanker, president of the AFT, was not their father.

The real fathers of this first big step towards privatization, he writes, were Ted Kolderie and Joe Nathan of Minnesota, who wrote the nation’s first charter school law and opened the door wide for entrepreneurs, grifters, and attacks on unions.

Singer is a flame-thrower in this post, because he has come to see that behind the “progressive” facade of charters lurks Betsy DeVos, the Walton Family, the Koch brothers, ALEC, and a galaxy of public school haters.

He begins:

If bad ideas can be said to have fathers, then charter schools have two.

And I’m not talking about greed and racism.

No, I mean two flesh and blood men who did more than any others to give this terrible idea life – Minnesota ideologues Ted Kolderie, 89, and Joe Nathan, 71.

In my article “Charter Schools Were Never a Good Idea. They Were a Corporate Plot All Along,” I wrote about Kolderie’s role but neglected to mention Nathan’s.

And of the two men, Nathan has actually commented on this blog.

He flamed on your humble narrator when I dared to say that charter schools and voucher schools are virtually identical.

I guess he didn’t like me connecting “liberal” charters with “conservative” vouchers. And in the years since, with Trump’s universally hated Billionaire Education Secretary Betsy Devos assuming the face of both regressive policies, he was right to fear the public relations nightmare for his brainchild, the charter school.

It’s kind of amazing that these two white men tried to convince scores of minorities that giving up self-governance of their children’s schools is in their own best interests, that children of color don’t need the same services white kids routinely get at their neighborhood public schools and that letting appointed bureaucrats decide whether your child actually gets to enroll in their school is somehow school choice!

But now that Nathan and Kolderie’s progeny policy initiative is waning in popularity, the NAACP and Black Lives Matter are calling for moratoriums on new charters and even progressive politicians are calling for legislative oversight, it’s important that people know exactly who is responsible for this monster.

And more than anyone else, that’s Kolderie and Nathan.

Over the last three decades, Nathan has made a career of sabotaging authentic public schools while pushing for school privatization.

He is director of the Center for School Change, a Minneapolis charter school cheerleading organization, that’s received at least $1,317,813 in grants to undermine neighborhood schools and replace them with fly-by-night privatized monstrosities.

He’s written extensively in newspapers around the country and nationwide magazines and Websites like the Huffington Post.

Read it all. Joe Nathan has frequently commented on this blog, defending charters as just a different kind of public school. I disagree vigorously because it is obvious by now that charters have become vehicles for busting unions (more than 90% are non-union), charters are more segregated than public schools (especially in Minnesota, where there are charters specifically for children of different ethnic and racial groups), and they remove democratic control in communities of color. The proliferation of corporate charter chains adds to their reputation as destroyers of democracy.

Bottom line is that Walton money, Koch money, DeVos money is not meant to advance public education but to eliminate it.

There is a reason that the Democratic candidates for president are distancing themselves from the charter idea. They understand that they can’t support the DeVos agenda. Betsy did us all a favor by removing the mask.

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Koch Brothers, Privatization, Segregation, Unions, Walton Foundation

Texas: The Hoax and Lies Perpetrated by the Charter Industry

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2019 //
5

William J. Gumbert has posted a series of analyses of charter school performance and demographics in Texas, based on public data compiled by the state. This is a summary of earlier posts. You may recall from an earlier post about Houston that the state commissioner of education is threatening to take control of the Houston Independent School District because of the persistently low rest scores of one school, Wheatley High School. Please check out its demographics in the chart below.

 

By:  William J. Gumbert

 

Ever since the “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform” report was released in 1983, corporate education reformers and privately funded, “public policy” organizations have promoted the “privatization of public schools”.  In 1995, the Texas Legislature gave in to the political rhetoric and authorized privately-operated charters (“charters”) to open and independently operate public schools with taxpayer funding.  As a result, taxpayers are funding a “dual education system” that consists of locally governed, community-based school districts and State approved charters.

Charters promised to improve student results by transferring the control of public schools to private organizations that had more autonomy to expend taxpayer funding without community oversight.  However, charters have not fulfilled their promise.  Despite the State funneling over $22.5 billion of taxpayer funding to privately-operated charters over the last 24 years, charters have not to produced better student outcomes than community-based school districts.   Most recently, 86.2% of community-based school districts received an “A” or “B” rating pursuant to the State’s 2019 Academic Accountability Ratings.  In comparison, only 58.6% of charters received an “A” or “B” rating. In addition, almost 1 of every 5 charters received a “D” or “F” rating from the State.

Despite the Perception – Charters Serve a Different Student Population:   Charter advocates have consistently promoted that charters serve a higher percentage of “economically-disadvantaged” and “minority” students from underserved communities.  But charters have also routinely stated that their student populations closely correlate with the school districts they choose to operate within. In this regard, Houston ISD and Dallas ISD collectively have over 75,000 students enrolled in State approved charters and both districts serve student populations that are at least 80% “economically-disadvantaged” and “minority”.   Thus, it is fair to say that both charters and school districts serve a high percentage of “economically-disadvantaged” and “minority” students.  However, the similarities in the types of students served by charters and school districts stop here.

The reality is that charters “underserve” many of the student subgroups that the “No Child Left Behind Act” identified as having potential achievement, opportunity or learning gaps in comparison to their peers.  The Texas Education Agency (“TEA”) tracks the performance of student subgroups in Texas public schools and while “economically-disadvantaged” and “minority” students are identified as subgroups, so are “at risk”, “special education”, “disciplinary” and “mobile” students.

With the needs of each student being unique, it is important to emphasize that a student can be included in more than one subgroup.   For example, a student can be identified solely as “economically-disadvantaged” or a student can be “economically-disadvantaged”, “at risk” and “mobile”.  The more subgroups that are applicable to a student, the more challenging it becomes to ensure that student is successful.   I highlight that “challenging” is not referenced as an excuse for schools to have low student performance, but rather to recognize the additional time, effort, care and resources that are required to help certain students overcome adverse circumstances and obtain a quality education.

A review of the student subgroups reported by TEA shows that privately-operated charters enroll a significantly lower percentage of “at risk”, “disciplinary placement” and “special education’ students than community-based school districts.  TEA data also demonstrates that charters enroll students with significantly lower “student mobility”.   Why?  It is hard to definitively say. But these types of students have proven to be more costly to serve, require the most effort to achieve good “test scores” and are the least likely to continue on the “road to college”.  It may also be that charters do not actively recruit students in these subgroups.  Either way, here are the facts.

 “At Risk” Students:  Students identified as “at risk” of dropping out are performing below academic standards and/or are confronting other challenges.  TEA’s definition of “at risk” includes a student that:

  • Did not perform satisfactorily on a readiness or assessment instrument;
  • Has a grade below 70 in 2 or more subjects in the foundation curriculum for the preceding or current school year;
  • Is of limited English proficiency;
  • Was not advanced from one grade level to the next for one or more school years; and
  • Has been placed in an alternative education program in the preceding or current school year.

As shown below, despite having a large presence in each of the 5 urban school districts listed below, some of the largest charters enroll 19.3% fewer “at risk” students.   In other words, for every 1,000- seat school campus, the school districts serve 193 more students that have been identified as “at risk” of dropping out.   While it may be surprising to some, the listed charters also serve a lower percentage of “at risk” students than the statewide average.

 

Privately-Operated Charter “At Risk”

Students

 School District “At Risk”

Students
IDEA Public Schools 45.9% Houston ISD 71.7%
Harmony School of Excellence – Houston 43.5% Dallas ISD 63.2%
KIPP, Inc. – Houston 46.7% Austin ISD 51.3%
Uplift Education 54.8% San Antonio ISD 73.5%
YES Prep. 50.2% Fort Worth ISD 77.8%
Average – 5 Charters 48.2% Average – 5 School Districts 67.5%
5 Charters: Avg. Per 1,000 Seat Campus 482 Students 5 Districts:  Avg. Per 1,000 Seat Campus 675 Students
                                                                   State Average:   50.8% or 508 Students  

 

Disciplinary Placements:  TEA data shows that 73,713 students have been identified as “Disciplinary Placements” in public schools.  These are students that have previously had behavioral issues or been placed in a District Alternative Education Program (“DAEP”).  By law, privately-operated charters can exclude enrollment to this student subgroup and most charters do. In fact, charter proponents have previously stated that many charters are not prepared and could not afford to serve these students.  As such, the responsibility to deploy the educational services and resources needed to serve “disciplinary” students resides mostly with school districts.  Once again, despite having a large presence in the same 5 school districts, the same charters served only 11 “disciplinary” students and the school districts welcomed 6,532 “disciplinary” students.

Privately-Operated Charter Discipline

Students

 School District Discipline

Students
IDEA Public Schools 0 Houston ISD 1,996
Harmony School of Excellence – Houston 0 Dallas ISD 1,843
KIPP, Inc. – Houston 0 Austin ISD 1,140
Uplift Education 0 San Antonio ISD 879
YES Prep. 11 Fort Worth ISD 674
  Total – 5 Charters 11   Total – 5 School Districts 6,532

 

 Special Education:  Students identified with physical or learning disabilities comprise an average of 9.1% of all students in Texas public schools.  But at the same charters listed below, only 6.2% of students are identified by TEA as “students with disabilities”.   The enrollment gap for “student with disabilities” among certain charters and school districts can be alarming, especially since it is permitted to occur with the State’s blessing.  For example, IDEA Public Schools is rapidly expanding in Austin ISD, but Austin ISD welcomes more than double the percentage of “students with disabilities”.   For every campus with 1,000 students, IDEA only serves 52 students with “special needs” and Austin ISD serves 109 students with “special needs”.  If Austin ISD served the same percentage of “students with disabilities” as IDEA, it would serve an estimated 4,500 fewer students with “special needs”.

Privately-Operated Charter Special Education Students School District Special Education Students
IDEA Public Schools 5.2% Houston ISD 7.1%
Harmony School of Excellence – Houston 6.3% Dallas ISD 8.2%
KIPP, Inc. – Houston 6.3% Austin ISD 10.9%
Uplift Education 7.0% San Antonio ISD 10.3%
YES Prep. 6.1% Fort Worth ISD 8.3%
Average – 5 Charters 6.2% Average – 5 School Districts 9.0%
  State Average: 9.1%  

 

Student Mobility:  TEA defines “student mobility” as the percentage of students that were enrolled at a campus for less than 83% of the school year.  In other words, the “student mobility” rate refers to the volume of students that were not consistently enrolled in a charter/school district throughout a school year.  With an inconsistent learning environment, students that regularly change schools are faced with unique social and educational challenges in comparison to other students.  For example, Education Week has reported that: “various studies have found student mobility – and particularly multiple moves – associated with lower school engagement, poorer grades in reading (particularly in math), and a higher risk of dropping out of high school”.

As summarized below, the “student mobility” rate of the listed school districts is a challenging 20.3%, while the “student mobility” rate of the charters is only 6.3%.   As such, for every 1,000-seat campus, the school districts must meet the unique challenges of educating 203 “mobile” students during a school year.  In comparison, the charter campus has a much more stable population with only 63 “mobile” students.

 

Privately-Operated Charter Student

Mobility Rate

 School District Student

Mobility Rate
IDEA Public Schools 7.0% Houston ISD 19.2%
Harmony School of Excellence – Houston 10.0% Dallas ISD 19.9%
KIPP, Inc. – Houston 4.5% Austin ISD 17.9%
Uplift Education 5.5% San Antonio ISD 23.6%
YES Prep. 4.4% Fort Worth ISD 21.1%
Average – 5 Charters 6.3% Average – 5 School Districts 20.3%
5 Charters:  Avg. Per 1,000 Seat Campus 63 Students 5 Districts:  Avg. Per 1,000 Seat Campus 203 Students
                                                                   State Average: 16.0% or 160 Students  

Comparison of Campuses Located Within 3 Miles of Each Other:  While each student subgroup presents unique challenges, schools that are primarily comprised of students in multiple subgroups have the most challenges to consistently achieve high student performance. In this regard, it is not a coincidence that many school district campuses labeled as “low performing” by the State are comprised of students included in multiple subgroups.

The table below further illustrates the disparities of the student populations enrolled at State approved charters and school districts by comparing the student populations of 7 charter campuses that are located within 3 miles of a school district campus.   In each comparison, the charter campus competing for students with a nearby school district campus served fewer “at risk”, “disciplinary”, “special education” and “mobile” students.  It most cases, the differences were substantial.  On average, for each 1,000-seat campus, the comparisons revealed that the charter campuses served:

  • 325 fewer “at risk” students;
  • 65 fewer “special education” students;
  • 199 fewer “mobile” students; and
  • No charter campus enrolled a student with a “discipline placement”.
Campus “At Risk” Discipline

Placement

 Special Education Student Mobility
Wheatley H.S.     (Houston ISD) 88.1% 36 19.0% 31.2%
YES Prep. – 5th Ward 51.1% None 7.6% 4.4%
Travis H.S.         (Austin ISD) 77.1% 46 14.2% 30.3%
IDEA Allan College Prep. 53.7% None 10.4% 8.6%
Morningside M.S.   (Fort Worth ISD) 88.0% 2 14.1% 25.9%
Uplift Mighty M.S. 67.8% None 10.7% 2.9%
Sharpstown H.S.    (Houston ISD) 90.2% 39 9.7% 30.9%
KIPP Sharpstown College Prep. 52.2% None 5.4% 4.4%
Douglass Elem.      (SAISD) 78.5% 6 9.6% 28.7%
IDEA Carver Academy 17.4% None 5.1% 9.5%
Andress H.S.         (El Paso ISD) 66.3% 51 21.1% 18.0%
Harmony School of Excel. – El Paso 49.4% 0 8.5% 12.1%
Carter H.S.          (Dallas ISD) 70.7% 20 11.8% 24.0%
Uplift Hampton Prep.  H.S. 39.5% None 6.4% 7.6%
Average –  7 School District Campuses 79.8% 26 14.2% 27.0%
Average –  7 Charter Campuses 47.3% None 7.7% 7.1%
Average Charter Difference – Per 1,000 Seat Campus 325 Fewer Students — 65 Fewer Students 199 Fewer Students

 

Conclusion:  The “A Nation at Risk” report started the false narrative that our public schools were failing and the attack on school districts has continued ever since.  These strategic attacks have served to fuel the “privatization of public education agenda” of corporate reformers and society-controlling billionaires that persuaded the Legislature to provide privately-operated charters with the freedom to expand in local communities with taxpayer funding.

The State has provided privately-operated charters with many educational advantages to produce better student outcomes than community-based school districts.  These advantages include less taxpayer oversight; greater instructional, staffing and enrollment flexibility; and the ability to stop serving students by closing campuses.  Privately-operated charters are also permitted to underserve certain student subgroups that have been identified as having potential achievement, opportunity or learning gaps, such as “at risk”, “disciplinary”, “special education” and “mobile” students.

With all the educational advantages afforded to State approved charters, common sense tells us that charters should be outperforming school districts by a wide margin.  But despite these advantages and 24 years of experimentation, the State’s 2019 Academic Accountability Ratings document that privately-operated charters continue to produce lower student outcomes than locally governed school districts!

It is time for the State to apologize to school district teachers, support staffs, administrators and Boards of Trustees across the State and admit that “privatization” was a misguided experiment.   It is time for the Legislature to apologize to taxpayers for increasing the costs of public education by diverting over $22.5 billion of taxpayer funding to privately-operated charters that have failed to consistently improve student outcomes in local communities.  It is time to implement education policies that are based upon the facts, not political charades or charter advertisements.  The future of young Texans is counting on it!

 

DISCLOSURES:  The author is a voluntary advocate for public education and this material solely reflects the opinions of the author.  The author has not been compensated in any manner for the preparation of this material.  The material is based upon information provided by the Texas Education Agency, TXSchools.gov and other publicly available information.  While the author believes these sources to be reliable, the author has not independently verified the information.  All readers are encouraged to complete their own review and make their own independent conclusions.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fake, Hoax, Lies, Privatization

Senate Republicans Want to Increase Funding for Charters, House Democrats Want to Cut it

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2019 //
17

 

The federal Charter Schools Program handed out $440 Million this year. Betsy DeVos uses this money as her personal slush fund to reward corporate charter chains like KIPP ($89 million), IDEA (over $200 million in two years), and Success Academy ($10 million). Originally, it was meant to launch start-up charters, but DeVos has turned it into a free-flowing spigot for some of the nation’s richest charter chains.

Last March, the Network for Public Education published its study of the ineptness of the Charter Schools Program, revealing that at least one-third of the charters it funded had either never opened or had closed soon after opening. About one billion dollars was wasted by this federal program.

Despite the program’s manifest incompetence and failure, Betsy DeVos asked Congressional appropriators to increase its funding to $500 million a year, so she could more efficiently undermine public schools across the nation.

House Democrats responded by cutting the Charter Schools Program to $400 Million ($400 million too much), but $100 million less than DeVos asked for.

Senate Republicans want to increase the funding for the destructive Charter Schools Program to $460 million, giving DeVos a boost of $20 million. The Senate Republicans added a special appropriation of $7.5 million for charter schools in rural districts. Is there a need for charter schools in rural districts that may have only one elementary school and one high school?

The best remedy for the federal Charter Schools Program would be to eliminate it altogether.

Charter schools are amply funded by the Walton Family Foundation, the Gates Foundation, Reed Hastings, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, the Koch foundation’s, hedge fund managers, and a bevy of other billionaires on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Bloomberg, Michael, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Koch Brothers, Privatization, Rural Schools, U.S. Department of Education, Walton Foundation

Investigate Nick Melvoin! Sign This Petition if You Agree

By dianeravitch
September 20, 2019 //
14

Did Los Angeles board member Nick Melvoin share privileged information with the representatives of the charter school industry?

Please sign this petition to call for an investigation. 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization

New York Times: “The Disappearing Schools of Puerto Rico”

By dianeravitch
September 20, 2019 //
8

 

The New York Times Magazine published a heart-breaking photo essay about the abandonment of schools in Puerto Rico, first because of its debt crisis, then because of federal privatization policy after hurricanes in 2017.

The Island has been strangled by financiers, then raped by DeVos-style policies, and the public schools were the victims.

The writer was Jonathan M. Katz.

It begins:

During the blazing summer of 2019, Puerto Rico was in tumult. Thousands of the islands’ residents marched shoulder to shoulderthrough cities. They sang, danced and demanded the ouster of the commonwealth’s negligent governor, Ricardo Rosselló — and, with him, the federal control board that holds economic power over the United States’ oldest remaining colony in the Americas.

The crowd’s ire was fueled in part by a sense of absence. Away from the echoing drums, down forgotten streets and across green mountains, the islands are emptying. Decades of abuse, austerity, corruption and now the ravages of climate change have triggered an exodus of people and money. As the summer wet season gives way to the wary hurricane watch of an ever-warmer fall, no evidence of this decline is more powerful than the islands’ hundreds of abandoned schools.

The photographer Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi and I spent weeks touring these monuments to neglect. Books and blackboards rotted in the humidity. Stray dogs made their beds beneath teachers’ desks. Some of the buildings had been left to addicts and thieves. In others, neighbors had refashioned empty classrooms into stables for horses, rabbits and pigs. Even in schools that remain in use, mold creeps, roofs are torn and gymnasiums sag like wet shoe boxes. Landslide-prone slopes loom, unrestrained, behind buildings filled with students….

Carlos Conde Marín School

Location: Carolina

Carlos Conde Marín was closed at the end of the 2016-17 school year despite protests from the community. As with many schools closed during the tenure of the former education secretary of Puerto Rico, Julia Keleher, the shuttering was sudden and swift. School materials were left to the elements, stray animals or anyone passing by. The school is seen here in May 2019, after the building was vandalized and also heavily damaged in Hurricane Maria. Gym buildings (directly above) were hit particularly hard because of their lightweight walls and roofs.

The hurricanes weren’t the beginning of the story, though. The disasters compounded a social and economic calamity that has been brewing for over a century. It arguably began in 1898, when United States forces invaded Puerto Rico, then a colony of Spain, during the Spanish-American War. Before the war, Spain had grudgingly granted Puerto Rico limited home rule, an attempt to forestall an independence movement. But with the advent of American rule, Puerto Rico fell deeper into colonial status. The islands’ people could not elect their own governor until 1947. They still cannot vote for president and have no voting representation in Congress.

Puerto Rico’s economy grew for decades, thanks to a series of tax breaks for companies from the mainland. Washington allowed the territorial government to borrow money by issuing tax-exempt municipal bonds and repay them with the rising revenues. When the last of those tax breaks ended in 2006, the economy stalled, leaving its government overleveraged and with few options. The commonwealth’s leaders began issuing riskier bonds that may have circumvented constitutional protections. Major lenders including UBS, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Santander have since been sued multiple times — some have settled — for underwriting them. In 2015, with $120 billion in bond obligations and unfunded pensions, the governor was forced to declare that Puerto Rico would stop making many debt payments.

Under an agreement signed by President Obama, Puerto Rico gained protection from lawsuits. In exchange, its economy fell under the control of a seven-member Financial Oversight and Management Board with offices in New York and San Juan. Instead of forgiving Puerto Rico’s debt, the board implemented a strict austerity regime, which has grown steadily more draconian.

Ramón Valle Seda Elementary School

Location: Mayagüez

After Ramón Valle Seda Elementary School, near downtown Mayagüez, was closed in 2016, neighbors began using it as a stable and an animal sanctuary. Police and education-department officials have tried repeatedly to kick out the animals. But the parents and children using the building want official permission, saying that will keep it from turning into a drug haven like the closed school across the street. This horse was taking a break from the sun in May 2019. Its name means ‘‘hurricane’’ in Spanish.

Theodore Roosevelt School

Location: Mayagüez

The Theodore Roosevelt School opened in 1900, two years after Puerto Rico was occupied by the United States, as the first U.S.-style high school in the western city Mayagüez. The school was renamed on the occasion of a visit by Roosevelt, who played a leading role in annexing the islands during the 1898 war with Spain. It later became an elementary school. It was ordered closed in 2018 and converted into a depot for books and equipment from other shuttered schools in the area.

Don Ignacio Dicupe González Elementary School

Location: Lares

Nature is reclaiming the classrooms at Ignacio Dicupe González Elementary School in Lares, in the mountains of western Puerto Rico, seen here in April 2019. Lares is known as the cradle of Puerto Rican independence for its role in an 1868 uprising against Spain and still proudly flies the revolutionary flag. But it has lost nearly a quarter of its population in the last decade, one of the highest percentages of any municipality. The school, which closed right before the hurricanes, sits in an almost monastic silence; the only sounds the songs of birds in a red flamboyant tree in the courtyard and the occasional blast of reggaeton from a passing car.

As conditions worsened, the trickle of people leaving for the mainland turned into a flood. Between 2009 and 2017, the population declined 12 percent, from 3.9 million to 3.4 million, according to the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College. The “Great Depression of Puerto Rico” had begun, José Caraballo-Cueto, an economist and associate professor at the University of Puerto Rico-Cayey, told me. “We have to acknowledge that the stock of human capital is decreasing,” he said.

The appointment of Julia Keleher as the Island’s Secretary of Education was a disaster. She fully agreed with the Trump administration’s determination to implement privatization with charters and vouchers. She was Betsy DeVos Without the billions.

Soon after taking office in 2017, Rosselló brought Julia Keleher, the founder of a small Washington education consultancy, to take over the fragile school system. Keleher, who is from the Philadelphia area, had a reputation as an expert at winning government grants. Indeed, her firm had recently obtained a $231,000 contract with the department she was about to head.

Keleher quickly embarked on a two-pronged mission to overhaul the school system. She pushed for the creation of semi-privatized charter schools and private-school vouchers. At the same time, she shut down hundreds of still-functioning public schools. Defending her actions, she later said: “Somebody had to be the responsible adult in the room.” Keleher, who is white, also likened the fury she received from Puerto Rican parents and the islands’ well-organized teachers’ union to the experience of being a racial minority…

At the end of the 2016-17 school year, Keleher ordered 183 schools shuttered, according to the Asociación de Maestros de Puerto Rico, the territory’s teachers’ union and Keleher’s most implacable foe…An estimated 160,000 more Puerto Ricans — another 5 percent of the population — have left since the storm. Keleher took the opportunity to further shrink the school system: Of the roughly 1,100 public schools left in Puerto Rico at the time of the storms, more than 250 simply didn’t open again. Most of those abandoned were elementary or middle schools. Some children who remained have since been forced to travel longer distances to attend classes, sometimes on dangerous mountain roads…

The territorial education department was promised $589 million in federal aid to reopen damaged schools, but as of March had received only 4 percent of the money; the rest expires at the end of April 2020. A United States Department of Education inspector general found that Keleher’s department lacked effective controls to prevent “fraud, waste and abuse.” Backlash from parents and the teachers’ union finally forced Keleher to resign in April. Three months later, she was arrested by the F.B.I. in Washington and charged with conspiring to steer contracts to associates at another consulting firm. She pleaded not guilty; the case is proceeding.

During her time in office, Keleher was paid $250,000 a year, while most Puerto Rican’s were living in dire conditions. She will stand trial for steering contracts to favored firms.

The tragedy documented in the Times’ photo essay is the abandonment and destruction of the Island’s schools at the same time that the chief education official was intent on privatizing the schools in service to austerity.

The parents and teachers cared about the children. The U.S. government and the now-deposed government of Puerto Rico did not.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Puerto Rico, Vouchers

Jeff Bryant: How Sharp Operators Fleece School Districts of Millions

By dianeravitch
September 20, 2019 //
13

 

Investigative journalist Jeff Bryant has published a bombshell article about entrepreneurs who operate superintendent searches, then call on their Superintendents to buy professional development, technology, training, and other services. The conflicts of interest and self-dealing are shocking. Districts lose millions of dollars and buy services they don’t need, while the search service continues to pay them.

Most of us are familiar with the case of Barbara Byrd-Bennett, former Superintendent of Chicago Public Schools, who is currently serving a jail sentence for taking kickbacks.  But the web of corruption has involved many superintendents and school districts.

Bryant writes:

In July 2013, the education world was rocked when a breaking story by Chicago independent journalist Sarah Karp reported that district CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett had pushed through a no-bid $20 million contract to provide professional development to administrators with a private, for-profit company called SUPES Academy, which she had worked for a year before the deal transpired. Byrd-Bennett was also listed as a senior associate for PROACT Search, a superintendent search firm run by the same individuals who led SUPES.

By 2015, federal investigators looked into the deal and found reason to charge Byrd-Bennett for accepting bribes and kickbacks from the company that ran SUPES and PROACT. A year-and-a-half later, the story made national headlines when Byrd-Bennett was convicted and sentenced to prison for those charges. But anyone who thought this story was an anomaly would be mistaken. Similar conflicts of interest among private superintendent search firms, their associated consulting companies, and their handpicked school leaders have plagued multiple school districts across the country.

In an extensive examination, Our Schools has discovered an intricate web of businesses that reap lucrative school contracts funded by public tax dollars. These businesses are often able to place their handpicked candidates in school leadership positions who then help make the purchasing decision for the same businesses’ other products and services, which often include professional development, strategic planning, computer-based services, or data analytics. The deals are often brokered in secrecy or presented to local school boards in ways that make insider schemes appear legitimate.

As in the Byrd-Bennett scandal, school officials who get caught in this web risk public humiliation, criminal investigation, and potential jail time, while the businesses that perpetuate this hidden arrangement continue to flourish and grow.

The results of these scandals are often disastrous. School policies and personnel are steered toward products that reward private companies rather than toward research-proven methods for supporting student learning and teacher performance. School governance becomes geared to the interests of well-connected individuals rather than the desires of teachers and voters. And when insider schemes become public, whole communities are thrown into chaos, sometimes for years, resulting in wasted education dollars and increased disillusionment with school systems and local governance.

Bryant lays out the evidence of collusion, corruption, and conflicts of interest. He reviews districts in Illinois, Maryland, and elsewhere. The evidence is devastating.

Nashville was victimized by entrepreneurs who manipulated the district and the process.

One of the first school districts to become entangled in the conglomeration of firms Wise and Sundstrom assembled was Nashville, which in 2016 chose Jim Huge and Associates to help with hiring a new superintendent. The following year the board hired Shawn Joseph, whom Huge had recommended.

Shortly after Joseph arrived in Nashville, according to local News Channel 5 investigative reporter Phil Williams, he began pushing the district to give $1.8 million in no-bid contracts to Performance Matters, a Utah-based technology company that sells “software solutions” to school districts.

Williams found Joseph had spoken at the company’s conference and he had touted the company’s software products in promotional materials while he was employed in his previous job in Maryland. Williams also unearthed emails showing Joseph began contract talks with Performance Matters two weeks before he formally took office in Nashville. What also struck Williams as odd was that despite the considerable cost of the contract, district employees were not required to use the software.

In addition to pushing Performance Matters, Williams reported, Joseph gave an “inside track” to Discovery Education, a textbook and digital curriculum provider and another company he and his team had ties to from their work in Maryland. With Joseph’s backing, Discovery Education received an $11.4 million contract to provide a new science, technology, engineering, art, and math (STEAM) program even though a smaller company came in with a bid that was a fraction of what Discovery proposed.

By June 2018, Nashville school board member Amy Frogge was questioning Joseph about possible connections these vendors might have to ERDI. A district audit would confirm that ERDI’s affiliated companies—including Performance Matters, Discovery Education, and six other companies—had signed contracts totaling more than $17 million with the district since Joseph had been hired.

Frogge also came to realize that all these enterprises were connected to the firm who had been instrumental in hiring Joseph—Jim Huge and Associates.

“The search that brought Shawn Joseph to Nashville was clearly manipulated,” Frogge told Our Schools in an email, “and the school board was kept in the dark about Joseph’s previous tenure in Maryland and his relationships with vendor companies.”

Frogge said some of the manipulation occurred when the search firm told school board members that disputes among current board members—over charter schools, school finances, and other issues—indicated the district was “‘too dysfunctional’ to hire top-level superintendents and therefore needed to hire a less experienced candidate.”

But previous investigations of school leadership search firms conducted by Our Schools have found companies like these frequently forego background checks of prospective candidates they recommend, promote favored candidates regardless of their experience or track record, and push board members to keep the entire search process, including the final candidates, confidential from public scrutiny.

“Too often, national search firms are also driven by money-making motives and/or connections with those seeking profit,” Frogge contended. That conflict of interest is a concern not only in Nashville but also in other districts where school leaders with deep ties to education vendors and consultants have resulted in huge scandals that traumatized communities and cost taxpayers millions…

Frogge noted school boards have alternatives to using private search firms that promote tainted candidates willing to feed the search firms’ side businesses.

“School board members need to become better informed and more savvy about profit motives and organizations that seek to influence their selection,” she wrote. “School boards can instead opt to hire a local school boards association (for example, the Tennessee School Boards Association) or a local recruiter with a reputation for personal integrity to conduct a search. They can also choose to hire from within.”

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Corporate Reformers, Corruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Ethics, Fraud, Nashville, Privatization

Tom Ultican: Relay “Graduate School of Education” is a “MarketWorld” Fraud

By dianeravitch
September 20, 2019 //
34

Tom Ultican, a former teacher of physics and advanced mathematics in California, is diligently analyzing the tentacles of the Corporate Reform Movement, which he calls the Destroy Oublic Education Movement.

Relay Graduate School: a Slick “MarketWorld” Education Fraud

In this post, he scrutinizes the Relay “Graduate School of Education,” a program run by the charter industry to give master’s degrees to charter teachers who have mastered the arcane arts of no-excuses discipline and test-score raising.

You must read the entire post. It is carefully documented and chilling. He names the key players, the funders, and gives powerful insight  the emptiness of the program.

He begins:

Relay Graduate School of Education is a private stand alone graduate school created and led by people with meager academic credentials. Founded by leaders from the charter school industry, it is lavishly financed by billionaires. Contending that traditional university based teacher education has failed; Relay prescribes deregulation and market competition. Relay does not offer “coursework in areas typical of teacher education programs—courses such as school and society, philosophy of education, and teaching in democracy ….” Rather, Relay trains students almost exclusively in strict classroom management techniques.

Ken Zeichner is one of America’s leading academics studying teacher education. In a paper on alternative teacher preparation programs he noted that Match Teacher Residency and Relay “contribute to the inequitable distribution of professionally prepared teachers and to the stratification of schools according to the social class and racial composition of the student body.” Zeichner clarified,

“These two programs prepare teachers to use highly controlling pedagogical and classroom management techniques that are primarily used in schools serving students of color whose communities are severely impacted by poverty. Meanwhile, students in more economically advantaged areas have greater access to professionally trained teachers, less punitive and controlling management practices and broader and richer curricula and teaching practices. The teaching and management practices learned by the teachers in these two independent programs are based on a restricted definition of teaching and learning and would not be acceptable in more economically advantaged communities.”

Relay is another component of the destroy-public-education infrastructure that mirrors Professor Noliwe Rooks’ definition of segrenomics; “the business of profiting specifically from high levels of racial and economic segregation.”

Founding Relay Graduate School of Education

Relay’s foundation was laid when the Dean of City University of New York’s Hunter College school of education, David Steiner, was approached by Norman Atkins of Uncommon Schools, David Levin of KIPP charter schools, and Dacia Toll of Achievement First charter schools. Dean Steiner agreed to establish the kind of Teacher Preparation program at Hunter College that these three charter industry leaders wanted. The new program which began in 2008 and was called Teacher U.

Kate Peterson studied Relay for a Philadelphia group. She noted,

“Receiving $10 million from Larry Robbins, founder of the hedge fund Glenview Capital Management and current board member of Relay, and $20 million from the non-profit The Robin Hood Foundation, the three charter school leaders partnered with Hunter College in New York to implement their program ….”

The following year the newly elected and extremely wealthy Chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents, Merryl H. Tisch, tapped David Steiner to be Commissioner of Education.

Read it all.

Personally, I find it offensive that a charter industry program calls itself a “graduate school of education” when it has no scholars on its “faculty,” no library, no research. It is a training program with one purpose only: to award master’s degrees to charter teachers who know nothing of the history, philosophy, economics, or sociology of education, who know only one form of pedagogy, who know nothing of child or adolescent psychology. Their students are indoctrinated into the charter way of thought, not educated to think for themselves, not exposed to different points of view.

Robert Hutchins, who was president of the University of Chicago and a great thinker, said long ago that the purpose of professional education is to teach people to become critics of the profession.

That will never happen at Relay.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Education Reform, Higher Education, Privatization

Rhode Island: Governor Raimondo Wants to Recruit More TFA Teachers

By dianeravitch
September 19, 2019 //
16

 

Faced with low test scores in Providence, Central Falls, and other districts, Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo wants more teachers from Teach for America, who have only five weeks of training.

She is a deep-dyed Corporate Reformer who believes in the magic of privatization by charter schools and inexperienced, ill-trained TFA.

This will not end well for the students.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Privatization, Rhode Island, Teach for America

Nevada: Vouchers and the Definition of Insanity

By dianeravitch
September 19, 2019 //
12

The definition of insanity: funding an experimental education program, discovering that it failed, then funding it some more and expecting different results.

Another definition of insanity: funding a voucher program that depresses student achievement, then demanding more voucher funds so more students can fall behind.

Why fund failure?

Despite Poor Academic Results Groups Sue to Grow Private School Voucher Program

A few weeks ago a pro-school privatization organization, Institute for Justice, announced a lawsuit against the State of Nevada over the impact of AB 458 to private school vouchers recipients, scholarship granting organizations and businesses receiving tax incentives.

Though pro-voucher advocates are framing the suit as “saving vouchers,” in reality, the voucher program did not lose funding. The controversy over some students losing their scholarships is actually the result of a single scholarship granting organization interpreting a law passed this legislative session (AB 458) differently than all other scholarship organizations. Certain families who went through this organization for their voucher funds were the only ones whose funds were not renewed, leaving those students in limbo as the law’s purpose is clarified by the State.

To be clear, AB 458 did NOT cancel funding for the voucher program but only ended the requirement that funding for the controversial program grow by 10% each year. Given that growth in public education funding often struggles just  to keep up with inflation (approximately 2%), automatically growing a voucher program with scant accountability and poor results just doesn’t make sense.

Businesses are also suing on the claim that they would not be able to increase their contributions to vouchers because there is no increase in tax incentives. However ,they could choose to continue supporting private school tuition through donations without having to receive any incentive if it’s a cause that they deem so critical.

Ultimately, the courts will decide if the legal argument holds water, but the policy and evidence behind limiting the program’s growth is sound.

Voucher programs don’t work – both in Nevada and nationwide. The latest results from the Nevada Department of Education showed that more voucher recipient scores decreased than increased year-to-year, mirroring similar trends across the nation. For example, Louisiana has seen consistent abysmal results – with voucher recipients performing worse and numerous private schools fraught with poor school ratings, fraud, and cheating scandals.

Lack of accountability in voucher programs has continued to raise red flags. Nevada private schools have no requirement that their teachers be licensed. An analysis by ENN found that of the schools that made the information available, less than 50 percent of teachers were ever credentialed in the state of Nevada, while some schools had no staff with Nevada licenses.

A look at the number of teachers who are licensed at private schools that have Opportunity Scholarship students enrolled. **This chart only includes data from schools who make staff information publicly available. Numbers exclude theology teachers and support staff.**

And the overwhelming lack of accountability – uniform testing, treatment of students with unique needs (private schools are less likely to accept students with an IEP), anti-discrimination, and other issues closely monitored in our public schools – means poor outcomes and underqualified staff may only be the tip of the iceberg.  North Carolina, for example, is grappling with testing issues, discrimination against LGBTQ students, and questionable academic content (with one popular textbook claiming the KKK was fighting to protect morality and slaves were treated well by their slave owners). One can argue that teacher quality, curriculum, or treatment of students is the prerogative of these schools because they are private, but if private schools are now operating using public taxpayer dollars, we must demand more.

Ultimately efforts would be better spent advocating for increased dollars for our public schools to ensure all our students have access to a quality education regardless of religion, sexual preference, gender, race or income.

To learn more about national efforts to fight private school vouchers, check out the new Public Funds Public Schools campaign supported by Education Law Center, Southern Poverty Law Center and the SPLC Action Fund.

About Educate Nevada Now
The Rogers Foundation, a Nevada leader in support of public education, joined with local, state and national partners to launch Educate Nevada Now (ENN) in 2015. The organization is committed to school finance reform and improved educational opportunities and outcomes for all Nevada public school children, especially English language learners, gifted and talented students, students with disabilities or other special needs, and low-income students.

More information about ENN can be found at www.educatenevadanow.com
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Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Failure, Nevada, Privatization, Vouchers

Audrey Watters: The Iron Rule of Silicon Valley: Thou Shalt Not Criticize a Start-Up

By dianeravitch
September 19, 2019 //
61

 

Audrey Watters writes a brilliant blog about Ed-tech and its misadventures. It is called HEWN, or Hack Education Weekly Newsletter.

She wrote a post recently about what happened when a tech investor tweeted that he refused to invest in AltSchool because it was a truly bad idea. AltSchool raised $174 million to demonstrate that the solutions to the problems of education were embedded in technology. Investors included Mark Zuckerberg, Laurene Powell  Jobs, Peter Thiel, Pierre Omidyar, and other big players in the “reinvent school” sector.

Watters commented on an article in The New York Times written by Nellie Bowles, one of the most insightful journalists at the Times. Bowles wrote about the shunning of Jason Palmer, a venture capitalist., because of a tweet criticizing AltSchool. 

Palmer tweeted:

$174M lessons here. We passed on @Altschool multiple times, mainly because disrupting school was a terrible strategy, but also b/c founders didn’t understand is all about partnering w/existing districts, schools and educators (not just “product”) https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/AltSchool-s-out-Zuckerberg-backed-startup-that-14058785.php …

I would say that Jason Palmer is one smart guy. He understands that disrupting an institution you know nothing about is inherently a dumb idea.

AltSchool was created by Max Ventilla, a Google techie, and it was a failure, despite a plethora of positive articles in the national media predicting that it would “reinvent” school as we know it.

As Bowles wrote, Silicon Valley was outraged by Palmer’s tweet. How dare he criticize a failed start-up! She says that he eventually made amends for daring to speak truth.

Audrey Watters thinks the problem in the Ed-tech world runs deeper than enforced conformity and silence cling of dissent.

She writes:

To a certain extent, I think Bowles misses the point of the whole dust-up. The danger isn’t only that many people are afraid to challenge the orthodoxy. The danger is that many do not really think all that differently. Many in Silicon Valley (and more broadly those working in science and tech and in elite university labs) believe they’re all The Very Smartest Men, and if nothing else, they’ve convinced themselves to that end. Sugar Daddy Science.

There’s a whole other set of truths that Bowles never touches upon in her quest to talk about the demand for good Silicon Valley manners in order to get to be in good Silicon Valley company. See, Sugar Daddy Science is bad science. And Jason Palmer was absolutely right. AltSchool was a terrible idea. It was obviously a bad investment. Its founder had no idea how to design or run a school. He had no experience in education — just connections to a powerful network of investors who similarly had no damn clue and wouldn’t have known the right questions to ask if someone printed them out in cheery, bubble-balloon lettering. It’s offensive that AltSchool raised almost $175 million. It’s offensive that so many ed-tech journalists carried the company’s water, touting its innovative and disruptive potential. I care much less that we were all supposed to be nice about the startup. I care that this was a startup — like far too many in ed-tech — that, with its normalizing of surveillance, was poised to hurt kids…Without a grounding in theory or knowledge or ethics or care, the Silicon Valley machine rewards stupid and dangerous ideas, propping up and propped up by ridiculous, self-serving men. There won’t ever be a reckoning if we’re nice.

You do have to wonder why Silicon Valley is so quick to shout from the rooftops about any perceived failures in education yet resist any honest accounting of their own failures. Remember the infamous TIME magazine cover called “Rotten Apples,”  which declared that Silicon Valley had found the answer to “fixing” schools? Firing teachers whose students don’t get high test scores. That was about the Vergara lawsuit in California, funded by a tech billionaire to eliminate teacher tenure on the absurd theory that poor kids have low test scores because their teachers have tenure. “Absurd” because teachers in high-performing districts are more likely to have tenure than those in low-performing districts,where teacher turnover is higher. Fortunately, the Vergara case was thrown out, along with copycat suits in other states.

 

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Technology
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