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Little Rock, Arkansas: Dr. Anika Whitfield Pleads for a Return of Democracy

By dianeravitch
August 31, 2019 //
8

Dr. Anika Whitfield is a remarkable woman. She is a podiatrist. She is an ordained Baptist minister. She has volunteered as a tutor in the public schools of Little Rock for many years. She is active in Save Our Schools Arkansas and Grassroots Arkansas. She is a fighter for social justice and equity. She wrote the following letter to Johnny Key, who is Commissioner of Education in the state. Key was trained as an engineer and served in the state legislature for a decade. Anyone who cares about the children and schools of Little Rock should listen to Dr. Whitfield. She is a dynamo.

The state took control of the Little Rock School District because six of its 48 schools were low-performing. Instead of helping the schools, the state simply abolished local control. The Walton family plays a large role in the state due to its dominance of the state’s economy and its many political lackies.

Dr. Whitfield wrote:

Commissioner Key,

For two weeks now, the Arkansas State Board of Education has been hosting public meetings to discuss the future of the LRSD. Since the LRSD was taken over by the state on January 28, 2019, you have been serving, by appointment, as our sole board member. Sadly, you have not been present for any of the four meetings that the state board of education has been hosting in the LRSD community. Why is that?

Over the past close to five years now, serving as the sole board member of the LRSD, you have not elected to host one meeting with the LRSD about the state of our district, the exit plan for our district, nor to gain insight from the stakeholders and the persons most impacted by the many decisions you have made regarding the LRSD. Why is that?

When we have called on you over the past four and a half years as community organizers and leaders on behalf of the LRSD community, you have refused to host public meetings about our concerns, the state of our district, and your plans for our district. Your attorneys or staff at the Arkansas Department of Education has responded to me that you are not required by law to host meetings like an elected school board, and that given your responsibilities to the entire state of Arkansas as education commissioner, it is difficult for you to make a commitment to doing so. Why then, don’t you give the LRSD back to a democratically elected board who can commit to serving the LRSD who can meet with the public regularly and provide a plan for restoration of the LRSD?

Some of the highlights you missed by not being present, in the room of public discussion were as follows:

•We believe Governor Hutchinson should replace Mr. Key (you) as commissioner of education because not only has he failed to serve as an effective board member of the LRSD, he has refused to listen to our majority voices that have echoed for close to five years now that we want democracy restored to the LRSD and to our school board.

•It has been evidenced by Mr. Key’s (your) actions that Governor Hutchinson appointed you to fulfill the pleasures of wealthy business owners in Arkansas (the Waltons, Mr. Hussman, and the Stephens) who appear to have made it a part of their business plan to invest in charter schools that generate city, county, state and national funding for their businesses to operate privately off the backs of primarily African American/Black and Latinx students.

•We, the LRSD community, realize that BEFORE the LRSD was taken over for six out of 48 (now only 44 because you have forced the closure of four of our beloved neighborhood schools), the Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) as recommended by the state board of education (SBE) and enforced by state law, had been overseeing the six schools that were performing below proficiency according to results from racially and culturally biased standardized tests. Therefore, the state board of education should not have, in good moral conscious, decided for the ADE to take on the responsibility of 42 other schools in the LRSD until they could prove success in helping the six schools overcome the barriers prohibiting proficiency or above outcomes of the students attending these schools.

•We recognize that the absence of a democratically elected school board allows for the management of an over $350 million dollar budget in the hands of one person, Mr. Key (you), who has not been allocating funds in good faith according to the will and the knowledge of the LRSD community as an elected board is required. We want to know where have the city, county, state, federal, and limited and regulated private dollars been allocated, spent, diverted, or unused by the LRSD board (Mr. Key), the ADE, and the LRSD administration?

You missed the opportunity to learn, hear, and discuss with the more than 120 LRSD community members who attended all four of the public meetings held in four different locations in our city.

And, most importantly, you missed, as our sole board member and state commissioner of education, hearing and responding to our (the majority of the LRSD stakeholders who attended the meetings (at Roberts Elementary and St. Mark Baptist Church) list of demands:

1) Immediate return of entire LRSD.

2) Local, democratic board elections Nov. 2019 or reinstatement of last elected board. (You still have time to announce and prepare for Nov. 2019 elections by law. Failing to do so will only further indicate your willful sabotage of the will of The People, the majority of the LRSD stakeholders. )

3) An MOA that the SBE and ADE will commit to doing the LRSD no more harm.

4) Reopening of our neighborhood public schools they closed.

5) Nullification of the current blueprint.

6) Immediate establishment of a LRSD Student Union and Parent Union.

7) Full accounting of all LRSD financials during state control of LRSD; constructive trust with method for LRSD to recoup funds from the State.

8) Same standards for private schools and charter schools as for public schools.

9) Higher qualifications for board members, both state and local/district; including requirement that some board members be certified educators.

10) Evidence-driven programs and solutions in all LRSD schools; examples include the early childhood development program at Rockefeller Elementary and the school-based health program at Stephens Elementary.

11) Make public input more accessible for parents and others responsible for children by providing child care at public meetings.

We expect a public response from you today.

Rev./Dr. Anika T. Whitfield
Grassroots Arkansas, co-chair

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Little Rock, Privatization, Walton Foundation

ALEC: Advocate for Charters and Vouchers and Scourge of Teachers’ Unions

By dianeravitch
August 31, 2019 //
22

What do you know about the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC?

It is right now the single most influential private organization in the nation.

This article, though three years old, gives a good overview of the ALEC education goals, mainly to privatize public funding for schools and to eliminate teachers’ unions. This is not surprising, because the DeVos Foundations and the Koch Foundation are among its most important funders.

ALEC opposes any regulation. It opposes gun control and regulation of the oil and gas industry. It opposes the public sector having any power over corporations.

ALEC is a rightwing “bill mill.” Its staff drafts model state legislation.

About 2,000 state legislators belong to ALEC.

They attend its posh meetings at elegant resorts and return home with fully developed bills that they can introduce in their own states, simply writing in the name of their state on an ALEC bill.

Then they can attend the next ALEC meeting and boast about their accomplishments.

If you want to know more, read Gordon Lafer’s fine book The One Percent Solution: How Corporations Are Remaking America One State at a Time, which nails the ALEC approach and shows that its purpose is to lower expectations.

As  you read the article noted above, you will see a proliferation of voucher plans under many names. Each of them is a camel’s nose under the tent. Pass one and soon there will be demand for another and another. The rightwing oligarchs are not interested in poor children or in education; they are interested in power and in killing the public sector that belongs to all of us.

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Koch Brothers, Privatization, Unions, Vouchers

How DeBlasio Protects the Charter Industry in NYC

By dianeravitch
August 30, 2019 //
44

When Mayor Bill DeBlasio was on the Democratic debate stage, he lashed out at the charter industry and vowed to fight the privatizers.

But as mayor, he is protecting them.

As Leonie Haimson explains, DeBlasio’s Department of Education routinely hands over the lists of public school students to the charters, despite the protests of parents.

No other city, she says, voluntarily gives charters the names and addresses of public school students.

Now he says parents may ask to remove their names, but that is not good enough.

This is the official statement from DeBlasio’s Department of Education. If you want to take your child’s name off the charter mailing list, it is your responsibility to ask to remove his or her name. If you do nothing, your child’s name and address will be handed over to vendors working for the charter industry.

What happened to the charter school wait lists? Do they exist?

Haimson writes:

After vehement parent protests and a FERPA privacy complaint submitted to the US Department of Education, the DOE announced they will allow parents to opt out of charter mailings in the future, as the Daily News reported today. This is NOT good enough, either from a policy or privacy standpoint.

Best practice to ensure student privacy would require parental consent, as the US Department of Education notes – especially as many parents will not notice the opt out forms in backpack mail or their children may forget to share it with them.

Best practice from the standpoint of good policy would be for the DOE not to allow charter schools to buy access to this information at all – which only helps them market their schools and expand their enrollment.

NYC is the ONLY district in the entire country that voluntarily helps charter schools expand in this manner; even ostensibly pro-charter districts like Chicago don’t make this information available to charter schools.

At the recent NEA forum for presidential candidates, Mayor de Blasio aggressively postured about how he opposed charter schools:

“I’m going to be blunt with you, I am angry about the state of public education in America…“I am angry about the privatizers. I am sick and tired of these efforts to privatize a precious thing we need — public education. I know we’re not supposed to be saying ‘hate’ — our teachers taught us not to — I hate the privatizers and I want to stop them,” he said.

Charter schools already drain more than $2.1 billion from the DOE budget as well as take up valuable space in our overcrowded public school buildings. Too bad that the Mayor continues to favor the privatizers in his actions, if not his words.

Categories Accountability, Bill de Blasio, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, New York City, Privatization

California: Charter Reform Will Allow Districts to Consider Fiscal Impact

By dianeravitch
August 29, 2019 //
7

The bill to revise the California charter law has not yet been finalized, but the agreement between the charter lobby and the public school allies will allow districts to take into account the fiscal impact of adding new charters. The financial stability and survival of public schools can be grounds for denying a charter application. At present, charters can expand at will, with no oversight or accountability.

Governor, lawmakers agree on new controls on California charter schools

This revision is the first effort to rein in wildfire charters since the law was passed in 1992. Since then, the charter lobby has grown very rich and powerful (income over $20 million a year) and has blocked all efforts to curb their growth or their frauds.

John Fensterwald writes in EdSource:

School districts for the first time would be able to consider the financial and academic impact on the district or neighborhood of a new charter school or a charter school that wants to expand. Districts like Oakland Unified that could show they are under fiscal distress will be able to deny any proposed charter from opening. “The presumption in those districts will be that new charters will not open,” said a statement from the governor’s office.

The changes mark a victory for school districts and the teachers unions that have been clamoring for tighter restrictions and more local control. They argued that legislators who approved the 1992 charter school envisioned a small number of taxpayer-funded charter schools created by teachers and parents, not a sector that has grown to more than 1,300 schools – the most in the nation – often run by nonprofit management organizations with additional funding from wealthy donors. Charter schools serve more than 10 percent of California’s 6.2 million public school students.

Leading charter school advocates have expressed fears that allowing school districts to take financial impact into account would give districts an excuse to reject a charter petition – and bring charter school growth to a halt.

The new version of Assembly Bill 1505 builds on an initial compromise that Newsom’s aides presented in July. It includes revisions to all key aspects of the charter law: the approval and renewal of charter schools; the appeals process for charter denials; and the credentialing requirements for charter school teachers.

The language of the final version may not be in print until after the Senate Appropriations Committee votes on Friday to forward the bill to the Senate for approval. It will then be sent back to the Assembly with the final amendments. The Legislature must pass all bills before Sept. 13.

Please take note of this crucial sentence:

They argued that legislators who approved the 1992 charter school envisioned a small number of taxpayer-funded charter schools created by teachers and parents, not a sector that has grown to more than 1,300 schools – the most in the nation

Charters in California have turned into a parasite that wants to utterly consume its host.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Privatization

Tom Ultican: Beware the Broadies!

By dianeravitch
August 29, 2019 //
26

Tom Ultican, retired teacher of advanced mathematics and physics in California, has written a well-documented critique of the Broad Academy.

He describes its origins and purposes. Its primary purpose is to privatize public education. The Broad Academy, he writes, is the powerful force driving the Destroy Public Education movement. Including the current cohort, 568 people have learned the disruptive and destructive philosophy of billionaire Eli Broad.

Their track record is deplorable:

Broad trained Superintendents have a history of bloated staffs leading to financial problems like John Deasy in Los Angeles (Ipad fiasco) or Antwan Wilson in Oakland. They also are notorious for top down management that alienates teachers and parents. Jean-Claude Brizard was given a 98% no confidence vote in Rochester, New York before Rahm Emanuel brought him to Chicago where the teachers union ran him out of town. Maria Goodloe-Johnson became Seattle’s superintendent in 2007. She was soon seen as a disruptive demon by teachers and parents. There was great glee when a financial mismanagement brought her down.

He warns:

No school district trying to improve and provide high quality education should even consider hiring a candidate with Broad training on their resume. Neither the Residency nor the academy are legitimate institutions working to improve public education. Their primary agenda has always been the privatization and ending democratic control of schools by local communities. That is why the founding billionaire, Eli Broad, is one of America’s most prolific financers of Charter Schools and organizations like Teach For America. He believes in markets and thinks schools should be privately run like businesses.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Bombshell in California: E-Mails Reveal Charter Lobby’s Goal of Complete Privatization of All Schools in the State

By dianeravitch
August 29, 2019 //
42

Blogger Michael Kohlhaas received a huge trove of leaked emails from the Green Dot Charter School organization in Los Angeles.

He has been releasing them as he reviews them.

No one has disputed their accuracy.

Yesterday, Kohlhaas released one of the most startling of these documents, in which the charter lobby reveals its ultimate goal: by 2030, every student in the state of California will attend a charter school or a “charter-like public school.”

He writes:

It’s not clear at all what they mean by “charter-like public school[s]”. It’s especially unclear given the amount of time they spend ranting about how charter schools are in fact public schools, so presumably charter schools are the most charter-like public schools of all, but whatever. The point is that this is an acknowledgement by the CCSA that they are in fact trying to destroy public education in California by removing ALL students from it or, if that’s not possible, making public schools be so much like their private charters that there might as well be no public education. In any case, please read the whole document. It is a revelation.

And they’re not just trying to destroy all public schools in California by taking away their students and, with them, their funding. They’re also trying to take away all their land. On a local level they have been working with LAUSD Board Member Nick Melvoin on a proposal to take facilities away from putatively low-performing schools and hand them over to putatively high-performing schools. And before facilities can be confiscated on the basis of performance, a ranking system is necessary. Melvoin’s recent school performance ranking proposal is step one in this playbook.

And the CCSA and its member schools don’t just want control or ownership of the property to help them educate children. Real estate is a key element of the private charter school investment market. The more real estate charter schools control the more money the private investors can make. This is a huge business.

Thank you, Michael Kohlhaas, for performing a public service.

And thank you, also, to the anonymous leaker who provided this frightening insight into the nefarious machinations and goals of the charter school lobby.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

Glenn Sacks: The Secret of the “Success” of Charter Schools and Magnet Schools

By dianeravitch
August 29, 2019 //
22

Glenn Sacks is a teacher in Los Angeles and co-chair of the UTLA at James Monroe High School. The title of the article is “Charter Schools’ Success Is an Illusion.” The following article appeared in the Wall Street Journal. This is remarkable because the WSJ is relentlessly pro-charter, pro-voucher, anti-union, and anti-public school. It publishes article after article celebrating the successes of school choice. For it to open its pages to a teacher critical of charters is amazing. Thanks to the relentless Sara Stevenson, former librarian at the O. Henry Middle School in Austin for bringing this article to my attention. Congratulations, Glenn Sacks!

I teach at James Monroe High, a public school in the Los Angeles Unified School District. More than 80% of my students passed the 2019 Advanced Placement U.S. Government and Politics exam. This far exceeds the national (55%) and California average (52%). All my students are minorities, most are low-income, and few of their parents are educated. Almost all come from immigrant families, some here illegally.

I’m proud of them. Their success is my success. But my success is an illusion.

The reason my scores are higher this year is because I moved from Monroe’s residential school—a traditional public school—to its magnet school. I didn’t get better; the academic ability of my cohort of students got better. Research shows that throughout the district magnet students’ performance was better than those at other types of schools, and better than the state average.

Our magnet accepts everybody, as any public school does, but its students outperform residential students in practically all areas, including standardized tests, participation in extracurricular activities, and college admissions and scholarships. What separates them from the residential school’s students is self-selection—they applied to a magnet.

Yet that’s a big difference. The pursuit of a school of choice is evidence of a student’s and a family’s commitment to education. Parents understand how important this is. A recent study of New York City’s public high-school system found parents were more concerned about the quality of a school’s students than the quality of the school itself.

The selection effect that makes me appear more successful than I am also makes charter schools appear more successful than they are. Charter proponents’ claims that they “outperform” traditional public schools are based almost entirely on their test scores and college admissions rates.

Each spring, pro-charter websites are filled with standardized-test-score and college-acceptance hype, contrasting charters’ “success” with traditional public schools’ scores and rates, as if they were competing on a level playing field. KIPP, the largest nonprofit charter network in the country, boasts: “Our alumni enroll in college at rates above the national average. They graduate from college . . . at three times the rate of their peers from similar socioeconomic backgrounds.”

Some charter advocates acknowledge the selection effect. “There’s a level of institutional hypocrisy here,” Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute said in 2013. “Charter advocates say, ‘No, no, no, we don’t believe in [selective admissions],’ but when you see a successful charter school, it’s filled with families who are a good fit and who want to be there, and that’s not possible when you have a random assortment of kids.”

Gordon Lafer of the University of Oregon, who conducted an extensive study of charter schools, found that charters also benefit because they “exercise recruitment, admission, and expulsion policies that often screen out the students who would be the neediest and most expensive to serve—who then turn to district schools.” An American Civil Liberties Union study of California charters and a nationwide Reuters investigation found widespread admission policies helping charters to exclude low-performing students.

Charter skimming is apparent in the public school classroom. Each year in the residential school, I lost a few students because they had been accepted to charters. Almost all of them were top-tier students.

At the same time, we received students midyear who struggled in charters and were bounced back to public schools. Yet students who flunk out of a public school midyear rarely can go to a charter school. If a charter decides to replace a student at all, it will be with someone from its waiting list.

I don’t blame charter parents for wanting to do what they feel is best for their children. And I’m sure many charter advocates mean well. Every teacher has daydreamed about having classes filled with motivated, high-performing students. Charters are that daydream come to life.

If charters aren’t the solution, what is? Our schools are understaffed and underfunded, and teachers are stretched very thin. We could do much more for our students if we had sufficient support staff and smaller classes.

Moreover, funding issues have cost schools many programs that were successful in connecting with students who were otherwise disinterested and disengaged. My principal wistfully recounts them, including an airline-mechanics program we had with the local airport, where our students repaired actual aircraft and trained to become airline mechanics. Teachers who run surviving programs are always in a struggle for funding.

The real solution to America’s educational problems lies not in expanding charters or other educational fads, but in properly supporting the schools we already have.

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

Breaking News: California Strikes a Deal to Reform Charter Law

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2019 //
9

After months of debate and disagreements, the charter lobby and its critics have reached an agreement to reform the current charter law, the first time it has been reformed in 25 years. Both Governors Schwarzenegger and Brown protected the charter industry. Gavin Newsom took an active role in bringing the two sides together.

According to the LA Times, both sides gave up ground.

The deal, announced Wednesday, gives public school districts more authority to reject petitions for new charter campuses, phases in stricter credentialing requirements for charter school teachers and places a two-year moratorium on new virtual charter schools…

Charter schools in California are publicly funded and independently operated. Originally authorized in 1992 legislation to promote educational innovation, charter schools have evolved from an experiment to a system that enrolls more than 600,000 students across the state. California ties education funding to enrollment, and charters have often been pitted against traditional neighborhood schools in a competition for students…

Under the bill, local school boards would be allowed to reject new charter petitions based on the school’s potential fiscal effects on the district and whether the charter seeks to offers programs that the district already provides, according to the governor’s office.

The deal would require all new charter school teachers to hold the same credentials as traditional public schools next year and phase in requirements for existing teachers over five years, the governor’s office said.

The proposal would also eliminate the state board’s role as a chartering authority, allowing it only to weigh appeals to determine whether a school district abused its discretion in denying the petition….

In a concession described as a bonus for charters by people involved in the deal, the legislation would allow county boards of education to retain their role in reviewing appeals for denied charter petitions. The two-year moratorium on virtual and other non-classroom-based charter schools also falls short of calls by unions for a statewide freeze on all new charters.

Additional provisions of the agreement would require charter schools to meet the same performance standards as traditional public schools, the governor’s office said. The law would build on legislation passed this year to ensure charters reflect the demographics of special education students, English language learners and other groups in the communities in which they are located, according to the governor’s office.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

Los Angeles: Controversial Charter Leader Takes Over Low-Performing “Learn4Life” Centers

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2019 //
3

Caprice Young is a star of the charter industry in California. She was a member and president of the board of the Los Angeles Unified School District. She was founder of the California Charter Schools Association, the well-heeled lobbyists for the private charter sector, which fights off accountability and transparency with the help of billionaires like Reed Hastings and Eli Broad. She is a graduate of the unaccredited Broad Academy. She led an embattled chain of Gulen charter schools in Los Angeles called Magnolia.

And now she will serve as superintendent of California’s floundering “Learn4Life” Centers.

The press release from Learn4Life says the chain enrolls 20,000 students in California, Ohio, and Michigan, but the Broad Center says it enrolls 40,000, in those states.

The Learn4Life charter schools are basically operated in malls and storefronts. Students drop in once a week to pick up their assignments. The schools collect huge sums from the state for low-quality “education,” if you can call it “education.”

Investigative reporter Will Huntsberry of the Voice of San Diego has written a series of blistering exposes of Learn4Life. See here and here and here.

Carol Burris wrote about the “Learn4Life” Centers in her report called Charters and Consequences.

Bryan Juan was falling behind in high school credits. Desperate to graduate on time, he left his public high school and enrolled in Desert Sands Charter High School. “I started off ok,” he said. “But even though I went almost every day and worked hard, I could not catch up and do all the paper packets—especially on my own. I got discouraged. I left and went back to my public school.”

Bryan was not alone in his failure at Desert Sands. The 2015 four-year graduation rate of the charter was a dismal 11.5%. Even worse, over 42% of the students who should have graduated that year dropped out of school altogether.

Desert Sands Charter High School enrolls nearly 2000 students; almost all are Latino. It is part of the Antelope Valley School District, but you will not find it listed on Antelope’s website. Nor will you find Desert Sands at the Lancaster, California address given on its own website. Bryan’s classroom was located in an office building across from a Walmart, nearly 100 miles away from both Antelope Valley Schools and the Desert Sand’s address.

Desert Sands is one of 15 independent learning center charter schools, which are defined as non-classroom based independent study sites, connected to Learn4Life, a network of schools that claim to provide personalized learning. On its website, Learn4Life tells prospective families that it connects students to resource centers so that they can receive one on one instruction because “no two students are alike.”

Bryan’s classmates, Mayra and Edith, who also returned to the public school from Desert Sands, found their experience at the charter to be anything but “personalized.” They described education at Desert Sands as no more than a continuous cycle of paper packets, optional tutor appointments and tests that students continue to take until they pass.

Three calls to three different Learn4Life charter schools confirmed that the instructional program was driven by paper-packets that students pick up and complete. After packet completion, students take a test to earn credit. Although students can make an appointment for help with the packet, they are required to come by only once a week.

Of the 15 charters authorized to Learn4Life operated corporations, 13 are required to operate high-school grade levels. Each school has its own name, principal
and sponsoring district, but uniqueness ends there. The schools are in reality a web of resource centers sprinkled in office buildings, strip malls and even former liquor stores. They advertise themselves with nearly identical websites with the same pictures, quotes, descriptions of program, principal letters and a common phone number andaddress. The homepage of the Desert Sands High School is indistinguishable from the homepage of Diego Valley, as well as the homepages of 11 other high schools that are part of the chain. All that differs is the name of the school.

Diego Plus is one of the many corporations operated by Learn4Life. Diego Plus and its three Learn4 Life charter schools (Diego Valley, Diego Hills and Diego Springs), are defendants in a lawsuit filed by Grossmont Union High School District, San Diego Unified School District, and Sweetwater Union High School District. The three charters opened their resource centers in the three complaining districts without notifying them. They were authorized by and are the responsibility of the Julian, Dehesa and Borrego Springs school districts, each of which receives considerable income for supervising these charters located far beyond their boundaries.

In total, the three Learn4Life Diego Plus charters enroll almost 2000 students. Their respective four-year 2015 graduation rates are 10.8%, 19.3%, and 0%. 45% of the students in that Diego Valley cohort dropped out of the charter school. It does not appear that long distance supervision of storefront schools is working out well for kids.

Transparency and accountability, as well as legal efforts to force legal compliance, have been stymied and complicated by the continual changes in Learn4Life corporate names and addresses. A recent petition to the court on behalf of the Grossmont Union High School District lists 13 corporate names located at the same Learn4Life address. In 2014, there were no less than eight not-for-profit corporations listed at that Lancaster address that filed tax returns.

Each of those eight corporations received funding from the state of California. During the 2013-14 school year, the sum of all government grants given to those eight related corporations was a whopping $61,476,306. About 11,000 students are enrolled in the 15 Learn4Life schools.

Officers of the Learn4Life corporations play musical chairs with titles, often receiving compensation from several different corporations. For example, Steve Gocke is listed as the Superintendent of Desert Sands Charter. In 2014, Gocke received $139,750 for serving as the secretary for the two different Learn4Life charter schools. Dante Simi served as the CEO of six different Learn4Life related corporations, and the CFO of two others. According to the organizations’ 990s, his
2014 compensation was $270,200. Dante’s son-in-law, Skip Hansen, serves as a Senior Vice President, and received a six- figure salary for his services. Simi’s wife Linda is also listed as a key employee of one of the corporations.

Perhaps all of the above attempts at obfuscation might be forgiven if the schools were actually getting the job done. But they are not. The average 2015 graduation rate for the schools was 13.73%. Two of the schools had graduation rates of 0%. Dropout rates for cohorts ranged from 27.6% to 53.9%.

Are these alarming rates solely a result of serving at-risk students? Although Learn4Life advertises that its mission is to serve students who dropped out or are at risk of dropping out, its schools take students as early as ninth-grade, including those who simply want a quick and easy way to graduate early. There is no requirement for prior failure before entering the schools.

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

Gary Rubinstein’s Favorite Top Ten Posts: Enjoy!

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2019 //
5

Gary Rubinstein offers his favorite posts, his Top Ten.

Every one of them is a jewel, reflecting Gary’s inside understanding of TFA and corporate reform, and his frank acknowledgement of their failures.

He left out many wonderful posts, including his careful exposes of the failure of the Tennessee (Non)Achievement School District, which consumed $100 million of Race to the Top funding and still failed.

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