Archives for category: Privatization
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Houston: Charter School Superintendent and IT Specialist Charged with Embezzlement

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2019 //
3

 

The superintendent of a Houston charter school and a school employee have been charged with embezzling more than $250,000 from the school’s bank account. 

The head of a Houston-area charter school and another school employee have been indicted on federal embezzlement charges, accused of siphoning more than $250,000 from the school for themselves and using some of the money to buy a car and condominium.
A grand jury in the U.S. District Court’s Southern District of Texas handed up charges this week against Houston Gateway Academy Superintendent Richard Garza, including one count of conspiracy, two counts of theft concerning programs receiving federal funds, three counts of wire fraud and two counts of engaging in monetary transactions involving criminally acquired property. Ahmad Bokaiyan, a technology support specialist at the school, was charged with conspiracy and three counts of wire fraud. They are now considered fugitives, according to a federal court records…
According to the indictment, Garza awarded a $280,841.85 no-bid contract in 2014 to a group called Hot Rod Systems to build an IT infrastructure at the new school, even though construction on the school had not yet begun. Hot Rod Systems was owned by Bokaiyan. Prosecutors say the two Houston Gateway Academy employees agreed that Bokaiyan would wire some of that contract money into one of Garza’s personal bank accounts. Within days of receiving the contract money from Garza, Bokaiyan wired the superintendent $164,381.
The indictment alleges Garza used more than $50,000 of those funds to buy a new Nissan Armada sport utility vehicle, more than $86,500 to help purchase a condominium, and nearly $26,000 to help make payments on a house loan in Cypress.
Garza’s school enrolls 2,400 students. He had plans to expand to nearly 10,000. He took over the school when it had low scores.
He began an aggressive plan to improve academics on state-mandated standardized tests, placing countdown clocks to test days in all classrooms and requiring even the youngest students to complete three-ring binders filled with practice tests and worksheets. As a result, their Coral middle school campus shot up the nonprofit Children at Risk’s annual school report card rankings, rising to the ranking’s number three spot. All of its 110 fifth and sixth grade students passed the math portion of the STAAR, an exceedingly rare feat for any school, let alone one that serves predominately low-income students. 
One wonders whether he worked the same magic with the test scores that he did with the finances.
Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Fraud, Houston, Privatization, Texas

Missouri: Why Fund More Charter Failures?

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2019 //
14

 

The editorial board of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published a powerful editorial in opposition to the expansion of charters into the suburbs. They are currently limited to Missouri’s two biggest cities, St. Louis and Kansas City. The editorial warns that the introduction of charters would threaten the quality and viability of some of the state’s best public school districts. The Republican-sponsored bill to add charters does not include any new funding and allows for renewal of low-performing charter schools.

Besides, charters in the two urban districts have produced meager results. Why have more of what doesn’t work?

The editorial recounts the dismal charter record:

“Some high-profile disasters have resulted from lack of oversight and accountability for charter schools. In 2012, Missouri shut down six Imagine charter schools in St. Louis. Students consistently performed worse on state tests than those attending St. Louis Public Schools while Virginia-based Imagine reaped huge profits from a real estate business.

“About half of the 30-plus charter schools that have opened in St. Louis since 2000 have been shut down for academic or financial failure. That’s hardly a success model worth emulating.

”Nationally, the picture looks even worse. The federal government has wasted up to $1 billion on charter schools that never opened or opened and then closed because of mismanagement or other reasons, according to the Network for Public Education advocacy group.”

Why wreak havoc on successful schools by injecting charters, whose track record in Missouri is poor?

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

Bill Phillis: One-Half of Ohio’s Authorized Charter Schools Either Closed Or Never Opened

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2019 //
17

 

Bill Phillis reports that one–half of Ohio’s authorized charter schools either never opened or closed.

This is not a sound use of limited public funds.

See the database here.

He writes:

 

Of the 600 charters that were authorized by the state to operate, 291 either didn’t open or have closed.

 

The good news is that half of the charters that were authorized are out of business. The bad news is thousands of students were harmed by the disruptions.
The Ohio charter experiment was never treated as an experiment. It moved from a $10 million pilot project to a billion dollar annual industry without any evaluation, scant accountability and no transparency.
In the process students are harmed and taxpayers fleeced.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Julia Keleher: The Destroyer of Public Schools in Puerto Rico

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2019 //
17

 

Julia Keleher will one day have engraved on her tombstone: “She Destroyed the Public Schools in Puerto Rico.” She joins the blog’s Wall of Shame for her shameless assault on public schools, the teachers’  union, and the students of Puerto Rico.

Keleher resigned her position as Puerto Rico’s Secretary of State earlier this week. Her resignation comes after two years of top down education reform. She was hated by the Island’s teachers. She’s closed more than 350 schools in Puerto Rico, worked hand in hand with Betsy DeVos to undercut public schools by bringing vouchers and charters to the island, undermined special education services for students and threatened to turn over 30 schools to fly-by-night companies with no experience who want to cash in on schools.
She is the Betsy DeVos of Puerto Rico, although she was neither born nor raised there. She was born in Philadelphia, where she attended Catholic school. She received her BA from the University of Pennsylvania and graduate degrees from the University of Delaware and the for-profit Strayer University. There is no indication on her Wikipedia bio that she ever taught, though she has done consulting, data-driven management, web-based stuff, project management, and worked for the for-profit Sylvan tutoring services. She is a Republican. She was imported to Puerto Rico to disrupt the public schools on behalf of Wall Street and the power elite.
After she resigned, she was initially given a $250,000 a year job in the treasury department but she was forced to resign that backup position after newspapers in Puerto Rico questioned her ethics.
The Yale Education Leadership conference still invited her to keynote its ed reform conference yesterday that’s supported by the Walton Foundation, Broad, 50CAN (funded by Jonathan Sackler of the opioid industry) and other right-wing organizations. Puerto Rican students from Yale wrote an open letter to Yale and to Julia Keleher which they distributed before she spoke. Imagine that: A conference on education funded only by right-wing foundations! Now there is a balanced discussion!
The letter is below.

To the Yale School of Management Education Leadership Conference:

I am disappointed, yet not surprised, that this year’s Education Leadership Conference has chosen to host Julia Keleher as one of their keynote speakers for leaders in education reform. Keleher’s “reform” of the Puerto Rican public education system does not serve to solve any of its problems but rather to mutilate it in order to benefit all but those Puerto Rican citizens who actually rely on high quality public schools. This celebration of Keleher’s work only displays the way in which members of elite institutions like the Yale School of Management can be so blind to the reality and context of life in Puerto Rico.

 

To Former Secretary of the Puerto Rico Department of Education Julia Keleher:

 

During your time as the Secretary of the Puerto Rico Department of Education, you promoted the closing of over 400 public schools. You boasted that schools were mostly back to normal just weeks after Hurricane Maria, despite the fact that many schools still did not have power well into January of 2018.

 

Rather than overseeing plans that would put the public school system onto a path of genuine recovery and growth, you pushed the creation of charter schools. In addition to this quasi-privatization of public schools, you blatantly spoke out about your intentions to meld schools with the private sector. You even boldly stated that students in Culebra should start being trained to be streamlined into the tourism industry, as if tourism should be prioritized as the only viable option for young Puerto Rican students as they grow up.

 

Even now as you step down from your former position, you will receive a salary of $250,000 just to serve as an advisor the education department of Puerto Rico. This is more than 10 times the average salary of a teacher in Puerto Rico, which only further highlights the longstanding disrespect you have exemplified for the public school teachers of PR. You have described unionized teachers engaging in peaceful civil disobedience as “violent” in attempts to invalidate their defense of an uncompromised public school system. Teacher unions have been part of the foundation of Puerto Rican cultural preservation, as they were key activists in the fight against English-only education efforts in the 1900’s and for keeping Puerto Rican history and cultural traditions in curriculum.

 

PR’s community of teachers has already been damaged by recent anti-union legislation, and your proposed charter schools would only further harm it as teachers and locally elected school board members are largely left out of their decision making process. These charter schools which you proudly explain are schools that use government funding yet are run privately (or in other words, not run democratically) further expose the colonial government practices already present in PR, which you uphold.

 

Beyond the political tone-deafness of the “reform” you have implemented in Puerto Rico, your sureness of their success only speaks to how little you understand life in Puerto Rico and the students you are meant to serve. PR residents know how long it can take to travel around the island due to road congestion and a lack of reliable public transportation. Forcing teachers to work 2 hours away from home through your merging of public schools is hugely disrespectful to their time and value. Working parents also cannot just drive their children to far away schools when buses are not available. Furthermore, the higher number of buses that would be required to transport students to school would only worsen the air pollution which causes Puerto Rican children to suffer some of the highest rates of asthma in the world.

 

Charter schools also consistently underserve and exclude students with special education needs, which account for more than 40% of all Puerto Rican students. This must not be ignored in plans for PR’s public school system.

 

The island’s limited funds for public education should be used to repair and update existing school buildings, not spent on unnecessary and detrimental charter schools and temporary trailers. You have relied on the emigration of families after Hurricanes Maria and Irma to justify your closing of schools, but basic logic dictates that closing schools would only worsen the conditions that made them leave in the first place. For many Puerto Ricans, moving to the mainland US was not meant to be a permanent relocation, but your “reform” only makes it harder for families to eventually return to their homes. You are closing pillars of local communities, which in turn weakens the entire island’s social and economic progress.

 

Though perhaps said jokingly, perhaps said in attempts to ameliorate the image of a non-Puerto Rican undermining the island’s public school system, you have referred to Puerto Rico as your “adopted land.” Though being Puerto Rican is not just about where you live and the diaspora is an integral part of the community, a fundamental part of Puerto Rican identity is a deep shared history of struggle and resilience, which you can never be a part of. This is especially true with your commitment to your role remaining outside of the sphere of the island’s politics. While the support of public education should always be bipartisan, no current administrative position in Puerto Rico is apolitical, especially not under the undemocratically appointed fiscal control board of PROMESA.

 

Sincerely,
Adriana Colón-Adorno

 

Yale College Class of 2020

 

Supporters of this Letter:

Dr. Adriana Garriga-López

Department Chair and Associate Professor of Anthropology at Kalamazoo College in Michigan

Agarriga@kzoo.edu

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

Lisa Haver: How Many Lawyers Does It Take to Close Down a Failing Charter School?

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2019 //
13

Lisa Haver is a public school activist in Philadelphia. Here she writes about the long, drawn-out and very expensive proceedings to close down a failing charter school in that city.

She writes:

When the School District of Philadelphia targeted Germantown High School for closure just one year before its 100th anniversary, there was no legal recourse for students or families. No law required the District to conduct an inquiry or call witnesses in order to hear testimony from those fighting to save the school. While the administration of Superintendent William Hite did hold an informal meeting at the school, the community’s pleas fell on deaf ears. Germantown High, along with 23 other neighborhood schools that had served generations of Philadelphians, was closed by vote of the School Reform Commission in a matter of months.

Closing a charter school is a very different story. The Pennsylvania Charter Law mandates a lengthy legal process, beginning with weeks of hearings at the District level. Thousands of pages of documents are entered into evidence. Should the hearing examiner rule in the District’s favor, the charter school can appeal to the state’s Charter Appeal Board in the hope that the 6-person board of political appointees, most of whom have ties to the charter sector, will overrule the decision of the local board. Should that fail, the school can appeal to Commonwealth Court.

Not only is the process is long and expensive, but the public must pay for both sides of the dispute while the wrangling goes on, year after year.

So how many lawyers does it take to shut down a failing charter school?

The Inquirer story explains that “because charter schools are funded largely by school districts, taxpayers are paying not just for the district to make its case but for the charter to defend itself.

The District also pays for the hearing examiner, the stenographer, and for the assembling and copying of thousands of documents. Aspira Olney’s lawyers are making between $180 and $300 an hour, but lawyers for Aspira Inc. wouldn’t disclose their hourly fees—and they are under no obligation to, even though they are paid, indirectly, with taxpayer funds. The District could be shelling out $10,000 a day in legal and administrative fees. That doesn’t include billing for preparation and other costs. That’s $140,000 for the already scheduled fourteen days; total cost will easily exceed $200,000. How many teachers or librarians could that buy? How many toxic buildings could be made safe?

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

California: The Latest Charter Reform Is Unlikely to Change Much

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2019 //
12

When the California Teachers Association and the California Charter School Association stand side-by-side to applaud a law about charters, you have to wonder who wrote the law and whether it will rein in charter corruption.

The latest reform effort was a law to guarantee charter transparency and accountability. Former Governor Jerry Brown vetoed a similar bill twice.

The State Board of Education approved 71% of the charters that appealed to them after being rejected by the local district and county board of education. Almost a third of those it approved have since closed.

Capital & Main says the new law won’t make much difference.

 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed into law Senate Bill 126, written to hold the state’s charter schools to the same transparency as other public schools. (Charter schools are funded by tax dollars but privately administered.) The bill, among other provisions, clarifies that charter schools are subject to existing state financial disclosure and conflict-of-interest laws. It’s a significant break from Newsom’s charter school-friendly predecessor, Gov. Jerry Brown, who twice vetoed similar legislation.

Still, the California Charter Schools Association, the well-funded charter lobbying group, praised the bill as a “balanced, fair application” of the state’s transparency laws, while preserving charter schools’ autonomy.

Some 31% of charter schools authorized by the state between Jan. 2002 and May 2018 are no longer open.

The fact that the bill sailed through the legislature without opposition strikes Julian Vasquez Heilig, a professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at California State University, Sacramento, as “one small, small step for mankind.”

“[Senate Bill 126] is two pages long,” he says. “The governor and Democrats are using it to say they’re doing something. But we are still spending hundreds of millions to build charters next to failing public schools. And many of those charters are not doing anything innovative that public schools are not already doing.”

And, despite protestations of “failing public schools” voiced by charter school supporters, many more charter schools are failing due to lack of oversight that the new law is not set up to fix. Not only would additional laws to provide rules for and financial scrutiny of charter schools protect district schools, they might shore up charter schools as well.

My suggestion to the editors: Please delete the word “other” from the first sentence. Charter schools are publicly financed but they are not public schools. They are private contractors.

New Oversight Law Won’t Prevent Charter School Financial Difficulties

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

Denisha Jones: First, Protect Childhood and Children from Harm

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2019 //
11

 

Denisha Jones was recently invited to give a lecture at Sarah Lawrence College, and she turned it into this article.

She describes the corporate threat to education and children, which was named GERM (the Global Education Reform Movement) by Pasi Sahlberg.

Jones calls on teachers to become advocates and activists on behalf of children, protecting them from GERM.

You will enjoy reading the article, from which this brief excerpt is drawn:

We can see how GERM has infected U.S. education policy and reforms. The Common Core drives standardization and aligns with a narrow focus on math and literacy. The use of scripted learning programs, behavior training programs, and online learning is evidence of the search for low-risk ways to reach learning goals. While charter schools claim to be nonprofit, most are managed by companies with CEOs and CFOs who apply corporate models to education.

Teach for America and other fast-track teacher preparation programs also use a corporate model,  developing education leaders who get their feet wet teaching before moving on to become policymakers or head up charter schools.

Pearson’s PARCC and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium are drowning  public education  in test-based accountability.  Systems that punish and reward schools and teachers based on student achievement on standardized tests are the norm today.

While the new Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) includes language that protects the right of parents to opt out—a movement that has been growing in recent years—it also maintains the requirement that 95 percent of students participate. Test-based accountability is here to stay and rapidly evolving into competency-based and personalized learning, in which assessments occur all day every day as students are glued to computer screens.

We have failed to stop the expansion of choice, which threatens the existence of public schools through the proliferation of charters and vouchers. In the U.S., most school-age children are educated in traditional public schools, but we can expect to see this trend reversed under the administration of Betsy DeVos.  We have failed to stop the assault on public education through school closures in communities of color.

And then there’s the inexorable  push down of developmentally inappropriate standards onto young children. The Common Core, adopted by most states, imposes expectations on young children that are out of step with their development, not to mention the research. Empirical data confirm that kindergarten is the new first grade, and preschool the new kindergarten.

On top of this, we have failed to stop racist school discipline practices that suspended 42% of black boys from preschool in the 2011-2012 academic year. This failure stems from our inability to address the systemic and institutional racism that is prominent in public education but often masked by teachers with good intentions who lack an understanding of culture, bias, and systems of oppression.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Childhood, Common Core, Education Industry, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), Privatization, Testing

Alan Singer: Is Promesa the “Worst Charter Chain” in the Nation?

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2019 //
11

 

Alan Singer writes here about Promesa, a charter chain in Texas owned by Southwest Key, the same company that runs detention center for immigrant children.

As is often the case, the big profits are in real estate.

Here is an excerpt from a powerful article:

At one Texas Promesa charter school site, vermin roam the halls, offices, and classrooms and the roof leaks when it rains. The non-profit Southwest Key school pays its non-profit Southwest Key Foundation landlord almost a million dollars a year in state tax money for use of the building. Not only does Southwest Key collect rent from its four Southwest Key charters, but it forces them to purchase services including maintenance and school lunches from Southwest Key affiliate companies at above market rates. Southwest Key Maintenance charges almost $200,000 for janitorial work that an outside company offered to do for $93,000. The food served at Promesa’s schools is purchased from Southwest Key’s for-profit food company, Café del Sol. It is so bad that students have gone on a hunger strike. In addition, Southwest Key charged Promesa over $300,000 this year as a “management” fee and bills the schools for “accounting.”

Southwest Key uses its “non-profit” profits to pay hefty salaries to corporate and charity leaders and to stockpile tens of millions of dollars in reserves. Its former president and his wife were paid a combined $2 million a year. The foundation is now under federal investigation.

Texas Promesea schools are so badly run that when teachers quit they are not replaced. At one school someone hired to teach Spanish was assigned to teach history and someone hired for special-education is teaching photography. At Corpus Christi Promesa graduating senior have difficulty filing college applications and financial aid forms because the chief guidance counselor was laid-off. The Corpus Christi school is in a crumbling former shopping center rented by Promesa for $360,000 a year from a shell company operated by real estate developers tied to Southwest Key’s shelter operation.

The charter operation has tried to escape its reputation by rebranding and now calls itself Promesa Public Schools. It opened new campuses in fall 2018 in Corpus Christi and Brownsville.

As usual, the question is why parents choose to send their children to these terrible profit centers that call themselves “schools.” Betsy DeVos would say that as long as parents “choose” to send their children to vermin-infested profit centers, then all is well. As usual, the answer probably lies in marketing, branding, and promises that ignore reality. Sadly, many parents are gullible and believe the former.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization

Providence: Charter School Takes Space in Historic African-American Community School Without Notice

By dianeravitch
April 4, 2019 //
5

 

Residents of the West End of Providence were startled to discover that a charter school was moving into a community facility–the John Hope Settlement House–without advance notice.

Providence City Councilwoman Mary Kay Harris said the petition was started after a community meeting on Friday at John Hope regarding the interest from the Wangari Maathai Community School to be housed there prompted more questions from the community about the potential arrangement….

“Make no mistake — the founders and promoters of this proposed new charter school did not reach out to the community and alumni of John Hope,” states the petition, which is calling for a community meeting with the board of John Hope. 

The Department of Environmental Management gave the community 30 days to respond before renovations begin in their community center.

“If you had to dig to find this information [about the meeting], we wouldn’t have had that little bit to have public input,” said Harris of GoLocal’s reporting of the DEM meeting at John Hope on Friday, March 29. “We know we won’t be able to see what the contract is. How many years is it for? And if there’s an extension? And what happens to the services for seniors, the food pantry?”

“The community walked away wanting to know who this school is for. Our kids haven’t been given the opportunity because the lottery was done — why are we being left out?” said Harris.

Perhaps the new charter was given the go-ahead by Governor Gina Raimondo, who is part of a charter-friendly privatizer, certainly one of her appointees.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Providence, Rhode Island

Indiana: Virtual School Scams Taxpayers and Students

By dianeravitch
April 4, 2019 //
13

 

In every state that has authorized virtual charter schools, these  schools are marked by two characteristics:

1. They are very profitable.

2. The “education” they provide is abysmal.

Typically, they have high attrition, low graduation rates, and low scores on state tests. The state fails to monitor them for quality. Students and taxpayers are fleeced.

The latest example is the Indiana Virtual School. The Republicans who control the legislature ignore failure so long as students are making choices. They happily waste taxpayer dollars so long as an entrepreneur is making money.

A former employee told the state Education Department two years ago that the Indiana Virtual Dchoolwas collecting millions of dollars for students who never enrolled or who enrolled but withdrew. The whistle blower was ignored. Of course. The employee was fired.

”Enrollment quickly swelled at the schools, thanks to the state’s favorable laws and lack of regulation about how fast they could grow. School leaders also had an incentive: Indiana’s funding system that gives schools more money for each student they bring in. Today, Indiana Virtual School and its sister school, Indiana Virtual Pathways Academy, enroll more than 6,000 students and could get more than $40 million from the state this year.

“But staffing didn’t appear to keep pace with that expansion. The schools have already received scrutiny for their tiny teaching staffs — with Indiana Virtual School at one time having more than 200 students for every teacher. And the schools have posted dismal academic results, with graduation rates in the single digits in recent years and a fraction of students passing state exams. Indiana Virtual School received its third F grade in a row from the state last year…

”The high student-to-teacher ratios, lack of student engagement, and high student mobility are often blamed for the schools’ academic shortcomings. Students at most virtual schools, in Indiana and other states, perform far below average on metrics like state tests and graduation rate. Last year, Indiana Virtual Pathways Academy graduated just 2 percent of its 1,009 seniors, and 5.7 percent of 10th-graders passed both state English and math exams.

“At Indiana Virtual School, about 24 percent of seniors graduated in 2018, the same year the school received its third F grade from the state. About 19 percent of elementary and middle school students passed both tests, and 4 percent of high-schoolers did.”

The School insists its students have high needs, blaming them for the dismal rates of completion and achievement.

But it still has not explained why it collected millions of dollars for phantom students.

Betsy DeVos strongly endorses Virtual Charter schools because they offer “choice.” Results and quality don’t matter.

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, Indiana, Privatization, Virtual Charter Schools
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