Archives for category: Privatization
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California School Boards Association on Needed Reforms of Charter Law

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2019 //
5

 

Almost everyone in California seems to acknowledge that the state charter law is broken and needs reform. Governor Gavin Newsom created a Task Force, under the leadership of Tony Thurmond, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, charged with coming up with ways to fix the law. Since the majority of the Governor’s Task Force has ties to the charter industry (including two members of the state’s charter lobbying organization), it bears watching to see whether the proposals are effective or cosmetic.

Now the California School Boards Association has released its recommendations. Its report mentions in passing that only one of every three charter schools outperforms the public schools in the district where it is located.

“After more than 25 years of continued charter school growth, California now finds itself far removed from the original mission and vision of the Act, which was, in part, meant to improve student learning with an emphasis on those who are academically low achieving, and to help generate innovation to benefit students in all schools. California is now a state where only one in three charter schools produces student outcomes that are significantly better than those of the traditional public schools that those students would have otherwise attended.5 Moreover, rapid expansion has brought about examples of inequitable access to schools of choice, financial misconduct, and governance challenges.”

Frankly, after reading this brief document, I found myself wondering yet again, why is the government supporting two different systems? Charters are not more innovative than public schools, are not more successful in educating students, are less accountable, and do not cost less. Remind me, what’s the point?

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

Betsy DeVos Gave This Charter Chain $225 Million. It Doesn’t Pass the Smell Test

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2019 //
10

 

Betsy DeVos recently gave $116 million to the IDEA charter chain, mostly to expand in Texas. Previously, she had already given millions to IDEA, altogether this lucky business has received $225 million in federal funds.

In El Paso alone, IDEA will open 20 new charters. That’s bad news for the El Paso public schools, because IDEA is known for pushing out the kids it doesn’t want and sending them back to the public schools, which will have to slash their budgets to adjust to lost enrollment.

Veteran Texas educator Tim Holt says that this IDEA invasion doesn’t pass the smell test. Parents and taxpayers are being fooled. He wrote this before DeVos gave IDEA its latest plum, $116 million.

“In the next few years, IDEA plans to increase from one school today in El Paso to over 20, making them larger than either the Anthony, Canutillo, San Eli, Fabens, or Clint ISD’s in terms of number of campuses. (“IDEA’s big goal is to serve 100,000 students by 2022” in Tejas according to the IDEA website.

“That would make them larger than Ft. Worth or Austin ISDs, which each have about 88,000 students each.) Of course, local districts are concerned because they get funding based on the number of students attending. Less students means less money. Even if it is for a year or so, as parents find out IDEA is not such a good fit for their kids. Less funding means more crowded classes, elimination of popular programs (say adios to that Mariachi band your young Vicente Fernandez wanna-be is in)…

“Public charter schools like IDEA use a combination of taxpayer funds, grants, and large-scale private donations to operate. Like public schools, they are accountable to meeting standards, but unlike public schools, they are businesses, beholden to those with a financial vested interest in their success or failure.

“Did you get that? They use your taxes to fund their business. You are paying for them whether they last a year or a decade. They can, as a business, pick up and leave at any time, shuttering their doors with no notice as many charter schools have done across the nation. Nothing prevents this.

“And like any business that needs to grow to get money, they have to advertise. Check out the slick work of this ad agency on behalf of IDEA.

“Smelly.

“Public schools in Texas have locally elected officials, that are responsible for watching the checkbooks of the districts. Don’t like the way money is being spent? You can vote them out and replace them. Not so with Public Charter Schools like IDEA. The Board of Directors of IDEA schools are mostly made up of well-to-do east Texas business people.

Think your kid is represented at the table? Check out the IDEA Board. Look like people from El Chuco? Yeah, maybe a meeting of the El Chuco Millionaires Club, but other than that, no, they are not your type. Unless you think that Dallas and Houston millionaires are your type.

Stinky.

“IDEA schools have a model of teaching that looks something like this: Curriculum is canned, pre-scripted and designed in such a way that even non-teachers can conduct classes. It is designed solely to focus on the standardized tests, that all students must pass. It is homework-heavy even though study after study has found that a heavy homework load is probably overall detrimental to students learning. Failure on tests mean dismissal from the school.

“Sorry kid, we don’t take no dummies.

“Since it is a scripted curriculum, IDEA can hire non-teacher teachers, ones that do not have any kind of education experience or degree. Think about that: Anyone that can read a script can teach at IDEA. That is perfect for young, inexperienced Teach-for-America rookies, from where IDEA likes to recruit their teaching ranks. Less experience equals less expensive to pay.

“Less pay means the chances that the teacher can deal with “non traditional” or troubled students is low. Want something for your kid that is innovative? Don’t bother enrolling at IDEA. Success is measured by how many pages the teacher can plow through in a week on the way to the test.

“Smells bad…

”Now consider this: On top of the millions in Federal funds that the State has awarded to IDEA, if they achieve their goal of having 100,000 students, that means, that every year, $915,000,000 will NOT be going to Texas’ traditional public schools, your neighborhood school, but into the hands of for-profit businesses that have little to no local accountability.”

Well, it’s a terrific article. Read it all.

And don’t believe those pundits who say that Betsy DeVos is so hemmed in that she can’t do any harm. Her $225 million gift to IDEA will eventually cause Texas public schools to lose nearly $1 billion a year, every year.  Really good for the IDEA bank account.  Terrible for the millions of children in Texas public schools.

That really stinks.

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Funding, Graduation rates, Privatization, Texas

Jacobin: Foundations and Philanthropy Will Not Cure the Crisis of Capitalism

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2019 //
64

 

The billionaires understand the growing rage caused by inequality on an unprecedented scale. They worry that the rage might be directed at them. This far, it has been captured by rightwing populists like Trump, whose tax policies deepen the crisis of inequality by transferring more wealth to the one tenth of the one percent.

Jacobin explains that multibillionaires like Bill Gates are trying to buy time through their philanthropy and “the giving pledge,” which commits them to give away a big chunk of their billions when they die. Unfortunately, or fortunately for them, their capital is so vast that they make more money than they give away, without working. At a certain point, capital multiplies just by sitting in stocks and bonds.

Anand Girihadaras hit a nerve in his book Winners Take All, where he described the elite Charade of pretending to save the world through philanthropy, while building mechanisms to control the lives of others.

Charter schools are a perfect example of elite philanthropy that offers a way to “save poor children” while destroying democratically controlled institutions and transferring control to private boards directed by financiers. The parents of the children being “saved” will never have a voice in the education of their children, will never meet face to face with a board member, will never gain admission to a board meeting, and-if they complain too much-will be told to take their child and go elsewhere.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Inequality, Philanthropy, Privatization

Jan Resseger: Ohio’s Failed Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2019 //
5

Jan Resseger writes here about the charter schools in Ohio that received federal funding but never opened or closed soon after opening.

In Ohio, nearly $36 million was wasted, and that was only between 2006 and 2014. Throughout the 25-year life of the federal Charter Schools Program, the loss was far greater but has not yet been documented.

She writes:

I suppose the idea is that if you scatter hundreds of seeds across a state, they’ll grow and enrich the educational environment.  But as I examine Ohio’s list of failed or never-opened, CSP-funded charter schools, I can see that the seeds were scattered so widely that they weren’t particularly noticeable even when they came up. Unless there was a splashy scandal or a school was widely advertised on the side of city buses, nobody would have had any idea of the existence or failure of most of the seeds that did come up. And anyway a lot of them never sprouted at all.  Because the Charter Schools Program has lacked oversight from the U.S. Department of Education and because Ohio’s charter schools are poorly regulated by a large number of nonprofit agencies that serve as sponsors, the Ohio press has—until NPE’s Asleep at the Wheel report—not to my knowledge reported that the U.S. Department of Education is funding a lot of failed or never-opened schools. Until now, the failure of this program has been virtually invisible.

In the the list of failed or never-opened Ohio charter schools released last Friday by the Network for Public Education, NPE reports: “Two hundred ninety-three Ohio charter schools were awarded grants through the U.S. Department of Education’s (U.S. DOE) Charter Schools Program (CSP) from money that the U.S. Department of Education gave to the states between 2006-2014.  At this time, at least 117 (40%) of those (Ohio) charter schools were closed or never opened at all.” NPE explains that 20 of the Ohio charter schools on the list never opened; ninety-seven of the Ohio charter schools receiving CSP grants opened but subsequently shut down.

I suspect that like me, hardly anybody in Ohio has heard of most of the 20 schools that received CSP funding but never opened. Here are their names: Academy for Urban Solutions; Buckeye Academy; Central Ohio Early College Academy; Cleveland Arts and Literature Academy; Cleveland Lighthouse Charter Community School West; Columbus Entrepreneurial Academy; Cuyahoga Valley Academy; Medina City Schools Technology School; New Albany School for Performing Arts Middle School 6-8; Phoenix Village Academy Secondary 2; Rising Star Elementary School; School of Tomorrow; Summit Academy Community Schools in Alliance, Marion, Massillon, Columbus, and Cincinnati; Technology and Arts Academy of Cleveland; Vision into Action Academy-South Columbus; and WinWin Academy.  It is difficult to tell from the names of most of these schools even where it was intended that they would be located.

Ninety-seven CSP-funded schools in Ohio have shut down, but from the list, it is not possible to discern whether they were shut down by their sponsors for conflicts of interest or fraud, or whether their sponsors determined they were failing their students academically, or whether they just went broke. Most of the CSP grants awarded to closed or never-opened schools were in the six figure range—$150,000 or more.  Two of the schools that failed or were never opened had been awarded CSP grants over $700,000; three had been granted between $600,000 and $700,000; two had received between $500,000 and $600,000; and 25 had been awarded between $400,000 and $500,000.

The federal Charter Schools Program is neoliberal by design.  It awards public funding to private operators—individuals and companies—to run schools in competition with the traditional public schools. One primary problem with the CSP along with other schemes to privatize the public schools is that oversight is lacking to protect the rights of the students and to protect the stewardship of tax dollars.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, Ohio, Privatization

Florida Education Association to Legislature: Stop Robbing Public Schools to Benefit Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2019 //
8

 

Florida is a puzzle. Parents and taxpayers support their community public schools and regularly vote to tax themselves to pay for them. Yet in the general election, they elect legislators who have a financial stake in privatization and are riddled with conflicts of interest.  Some legislators are employed by charter schools and their related companies; some have family members who own and/or operate charter schools. Until the voters figure out that they are being hornswoggled, they will continue to have a Legislature that robs money from their public schools to pay for unaccountable, inefficient charter schools.

 

                            

FEA: Legislature needs to heed voters and fund neighborhood public schools

 

TALLAHASSEE — Time and again, Florida’s electorate has demonstrated broad, bipartisan consensus on the need to increase funding for our students and neighborhood public schools.

 

The evidence of their support for investment in our schools can be found in the tens of thousands of petitions that the Florida Education Association (FEA) is delivering today, in the nearly 2 million Floridians who voted in 2018 to increase their local taxes in order to help schools, and consistently through public-opinion polls.

 

However, House leaders don’t appear to be listening.

 

“Stakeholders around this state have chosen to support their neighborhood public schools through local referendums, choosing to pay out of their own pockets to provide for students and keep qualified educators in classrooms,” said FEA President Fedrick Ingram. “The Florida House now wants to take that money in yet another attempt to defund our neighborhood public schools.”

 

Under House Bill (HB) 7123, money collected locally to support neighborhood public schools would be sent to charter schools and for-profit, out-of-state charter operators. The FEA calls on the House to leave the locally generated dollars alone and to instead follow the Senate’s lead in funding a substantial increase in the state budget’s per-student base allocation for our schools.

 

While financed by taxpayer dollars, charter schools are privately run. They differ markedly in several ways from the neighborhood public schools that educate the great majority of our students:

  • Public schools’ budgets are transparent — in order to get public support for local referendums, school districts had to prove the need for additional money. There is no such financial transparency for charter schools.
  • What little we do know about how charter schools spend their money paints a very troubling picture. Charter schools spend a much lower percentage of their revenue on instruction than public schools.
  • Instead of spending money on students, many charter schools spend in excess of $1 million a year of taxpayer money in fees to for-profit management companies.
  • Academic Solutions Academy in Fort Lauderdale, for instance, spends about 25 percent of all the taxpayer dollars it receives on instructional services, according to a school audit.
  • While HB 7123 does include language that says charter schools must use local levies for voter-authorized purposes, there appears to be no enforcement mechanism for that provision. How can voters be sure that charter schools are using the money the way voters intended, and how will charter schools be held accountable if they don’t?

 

The diversion of locally generated funds would represent one more sad chapter in the story of Florida’s failure to adequately support high quality neighborhood public schools.

 

Florida now ranks among the bottom 10 states nationally in funding for our students, and education spending remains below pre-recession levels. The average teacher salary in Florida has dropped to 46th in the nation, while many school staff earn a wage below the federal poverty line. We face a growing teacher shortage. More than 4,000 classrooms were without a qualified teacher at the start of this school year, and there may soon be more than 10,000 teacher vacancies according to Florida Department of Education projections.

 

The public and educators want change. More than 23,000 Floridians have spoken by petition to call for a major reinvestment in our neighborhood public schools. The printed petitions were delivered to the office of the speaker of the Florida House on Tuesday, April 23, following an FEA news conference at the Capitol. News conference speakers included FEA President Ingram; Justin Katz, president of the Palm Beach County Classroom Teachers Association; and Karla Hernandez-Mats, president of United Teachers of Dade.

 

We must fund our future. Find the FEA petition at https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/time-to-step-up-for-neighborhood-public-schools.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Florida, Privatization

Florida Senate Endorses a Fifth Voucher Program

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2019 //
19

 

Spurred on by Governor Ron DeSantis, Jeb Bush, and Betsy DeVos, the Florida Senate endorsed a fifth private voucher program. 

“The bill would create a new Family Empowerment Scholarship — the state’s fifth voucher program — that could help up to 18,000 students pay private school tuition with state-backed scholarships. The program would target youngsters from low-income families but could be open to more middle class ones, too, with an income limit of nearly $80,000 for a family of four….

“Every parent knows what’s best for their individual child, and at no point should we turn over that responsibility to the government,” said Sen. Manny Diaz, R-Hialeah, one of the bill’s sponsors.”

The new program would be funded with money taken from the state education budget, up to $130 million. Other vouchers programs are “tax credits” given to corporations or individuals. Because this money comes right out of the state budget, it might be subject to legal challenge since it directly violates the state constitution’s prohibition on public money for religious schools.

Republicans are betting that the state courts will ignore the state constitution and the 2012 referendum that went against Jeb Bush’s effort to change that provision of the state constitution.

More than 80% of students using vouchers attend religious schools. Voucher schools “do not have to give students state tests nor meet state standards when it comes to academics, teacher credentials or facilities.”

Florida Republicans continue their  assault on public schools.

Florida is no model for the nation.

On the NAEP, Florida ranks at the national average in 8th grade reading and math. It has large achievement gaps between black and white students. Ignore Florida’s fourth grade scores; they are tainted by the state policy of retaining third grade students who don’t pass the state reading test.

I don’t know whether voucher students are included in NAEP’s sample. The State makes sure they are not included on state tests.

 

Categories Betsy DeVos, Bush, Jeb, Disruption, Florida, Privatization, Separation of church and state

Oakland: Remember Laurene Powell Jobs’ $100 Million Giveaway Contest to Reinvent High Schools? This One Collapsed

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2019 //
7

Remember when Laurene Powell Jobs announced that she was running a competition for ideas to reinvent the high school? She was offering $10 million to each winning proposal, which she called “Super Schools.”

Nearly 700 proposals were entered, but only 10 were chosen.

One of the winners was in Oakland, California, a district that has been subject to nonstop disruption, charters, and and constant meddling by the Eli Broad foundation. For years, the district has been led by Broadies, who have run it into a ditch and failed to revive its fortunes.

The Oakland winner planned to open a Super School that incorporated Mark Zuckerberg’s Summit Learning online platform.

But things went poorly after Oakland’s Broadie superintendent Antwan Wilson was lured to the District of Columbia to be its chancellor (where he was soon ousted after it was revealed that he pulled strings to get his daughter into one of the best public schools, a practice that Wilson had forbidden for others. Wilson is now running an education consulting business.)

Two years ago, the Oakland Super School was abandoned before it opened. 

The turmoil in the district, which has been a near constant for years, made it impossible to open.

Summit Public Schools, which operates a chain of charter schools, with support from the Oakland school district and Mayor Libby Schaaf’s office, submitted a winning proposal for a charter school focusing on personal learning and real-world experiences. The goal was to open the new school at the California College of the Arts on Broadway in Rockridge in fall 2018.

But the effort started to fall apart over the last several months and was ultimately abandoned in recent weeks, The Chronicle has learned. Now, Summit leaders will use the money for one of their existing charter schools in Daly City.

“There are just better ways for us to help kids in the Bay Area,” said Jason Solomon, senior director of advocacy and engagement at Summit Public Schools, which operates eight charter schools in the Bay Area and three in Washington state.

Solomon noted that the team’s entry to build the new school included the support of former Oakland Superintendent Antwan Wilson, who resigned this year to lead the Washington, D.C., schools. On top of the turnover in leadership, the district is grappling with the need to close or consolidate schools given declining enrollment while juggling a $30 million budget shortfall over the next year.

Community groups were unhappy that the proposed charter would be sited very close to an existing Oakland public school that had not yet been disrupted and destroyed.

With Antwan Wilson gone, Summit charters was not sure they would have a champion so they shifted the funding to one of their schools in Daly City.

Summit substitutes computer-based instruction for real teachers, and it has driven out in places as distant as Connecticut and Kansas, by parents and students.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Privatization, Technology

Bill Phillis: Repeal HB 70 Now!

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2019 //
5

 

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Toledo Board of Education member: HB 70 is “possibly one of the most undemocratic, mean-spirited, cynical pieces of legislation ever passed in the state of Ohio”
Several state legislators are attempting to repeal or at least put a moratorium on HB 70. Other state officials, including the State Superintendent and Governor, want to repair it.
HB 70, enacted by the 131stGeneral Assembly in a 24-hour period with no public involvement, was a colossal mistake. It merely punishes school districts that serve a high concentration of poverty students.
Ohioans must call for a complete repeal of HB 70. A repair job on HB 70 would be like using chewing gum to repair a leak in the Hoover Dam. HB 70 must be replaced by legislation that provides services to poverty students.
Governance is not the issue. Poverty is.
William L. Phillis | Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding | 614.228.6540| ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net| www.ohiocoalition.org
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Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

Eva Moskowitz Accused of Violating Student Rights, Wins $10 Million from DeVos, Will Receive an Honorary Degree from Tufts

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2019 //
26

 

As Leonie Haimson explains in this post, it has been a busy few weeks for Eva Moskowitz, founder and CEO of NYC’s controversial Success Academy charter chain.

Once again, her chain has been accused of violating the rights of students; Betsy DeVos awarded $9.8 million to her schools, added to the $43.4 million  Eva previously received from the federal Charter Schools Program; she will receive an honorary degree from Tufts University; and the President of Harvard University is giving the commencement speech to her graduating class.

How does it happen that the president of the nation’s most prestigious university is speaking to what may be a graduating class of a few dozen students at a charter school? .

“The former president of Tufts, Lawrence Bacow, who is the current president of Harvard is scheduled to speak at the Success high school’s graduation, which last year only graduated 16 out of the 73 students who entered the school in Kindergarten  or first grade.  No doubt both occurrences were influenced by the fact that the head of the Success board, hedge funder Steve Galbreath, is also on the Tufts board of trustees and heads its investment committee.”

Follow the money.

Don’t be surprised if next year Moskowitz land DeVos herself, America’s leading charter school champion.

 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, New York City, Privatization

Tennessee: Legal Challenge Expected if Senate Passes Voucher Bill

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2019 //
10

 

Chalkbeat reports the likelihood of a legal challenge to any voucher bill in Tennessee if State Senate passes one as House did yesterday in a contentious proceeding.

Read the details here.

Categories Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Tennessee, Vouchers
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