Archives for category: Privatization
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RI: The Opioid King Funds Charters and Governor Raimondo

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2019 //
11

 

In Rhode Island, Governor Gina Raimondo is Charter-mad. This makes sense since she used to be a hedge fund manager and most HFMs are Charter zealots.

What was not so well known is that Jonathan Sackler has contributed large sums to support more charters in RI and to help Raimondo’s political career.

Sackler’s billions are derived from the marketing and sale of opioids, which have killed more than 200,000 people.

The Massachusetts Attorney General is suing the Sackler Family, not just Purdue Pharmaceuticals.

Raimondo won’t return the bloody Sackler money.

“A GoLocal review of federal tax documents has found that Jonathan Sackler — who is now being personally sued by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and Suffolk County New York for his role in the illegal marketing of opioids which is tied to the deaths of tens of thousands overdoses — has funneled millions of dollars to charter school company Achievement First. The company runs three schools in Rhode Island.

“As GoLocal has previously reported, Jonathan Sackler and his wife Mary Corson are significant donors to Governor Gina Raimondo and the Governor has repeatedly refused to donate or return the donations.

“Sackler has served as a board member for years for Achievement First, but disappeared from the list of Board member in mid-2018 — about the time that hundreds of lawsuits were filed by states and municipalities against Sackler’s company Purdue Pharma. Purdue Pharma is controlled by the Sacklers and Jonathan has served on the Purdue board for years. The State of Rhode Island and a number of municipalities have filed suit against Sackler’s company Purdue — and other firms.”

Is it “for the kids”?

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

“No Excuses” Charter Chain Has a Reckoning with Its Harsh Disciplinary Policies

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2019 //
29

The Achievement First charter chain is committed to re-examining the value and purpose of its harsh disciplinary policies after a white principal was videotaped shoving a black student, and a behavioral specialist resigned and blasted the oppressive climate at one of the charters.

No-excuses charters claim that their draconian policies produce high test scores but critics have long criticized the inhumanity of their rules, which smack of colonialism.

Turmoil at an Achievement First high school has escalated into a larger reckoning for the charter school network spanning three states.

The spark was two videos released in January. In the first, the former principal of Achievement First Amistad High School in New Haven, who is white, is seen shoving a student. In the second, a former staff member, who is black and who released the first video, described the school as “oppressive.”

The ensuing backlash — including over the fact that the principal was not immediately fired — has pushed the network’s leaders to accelerate planned changes. Now, they say they’re open to reconsidering things big and small, from how students are expected to sit in class to even the network’s leadership.

The two CEOs have recently sent a series of candid emails to the network’s staff, who work across 36 schools in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New York. Those emails, obtained by Chalkbeat, illustrate how the events at Amistad raised significant questions about the network’s approach to racism, discipline, and leadership.

“The last 3 weeks have been the hardest weeks we’ve ever had leading our network,” CEOs Dacia Toll and Doug McCurry wrote. “What happened at AF Amistad High School is a failure of our leadership.”

Many of those questions connect the controversy to a long-standing debate about so-called “no excuses” charter schools, which emphasize strict discipline, high expectations, and an academic focus. Research has found that these school networks, including Achievement First, substantially increase students’ test scores and, in some cases, help more of them attend college. But critics and some scholars argue that the discipline-heavy approach amounts to a racist, even abusive form of control over mostly students of color, while failing to prepare them to lead independent lives.

In the last two months, more Achievement First teachers and parents have called for change. The network’s leaders say they are committed to improving students’ experiences — and everything is on the table as its principals gather this week.

“We’re going to remain a high-expectations organization. The provocative question is, what does high expectations actually look like?” Toll told Chalkbeat in a lengthy interview. “Is it high expectations or low expectations to insist that kids fold their hands?”

‘This is not a proud moment for AF’

The controversy broke into public view because of Steven Cotton, a behavioral specialist with Achievement First who worked for the network for five years.

Cotton says he saw the security footage in October showing principal Morgan Barth grabbing and shoving a student emerging from a classroom. By January, Cotton had resigned and posted a lengthy Facebook video criticizing Amistad’s treatment of teachers and students, including its merit and demerit discipline system.

“There’s not a place in that building at this point where a kid can be a kid,” he said. “Yes, we’re here for education, but we’re not here to be robots.”

The New Haven Independent published a story featuring the security camera footage and Cotton’s video. In the piece, the brother of another student said that Barth had shoved his sibling at a Bridgeport Achievement First school Barth led in 2013. (Toll told Chalkbeat that, because it was a personnel matter, she could not comment on whether she or the network had known about that allegation.)

Barth resigned that day, hours after the Independent story.

 

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

Libertarians: Cory Booker is the Champion of Charters and Vouchers

By dianeravitch
March 3, 2019 //
21

 

In this article, a writer for the libertarian Reason magazine–which supports free-market solutions to all government problems–praises Cory Booker for his advocacy on behalf of charters and vouchers, and even dares to mention that he worked closely with Betsy DeVos, his ideological ally on education issues.

Booker is proud of his record as an advocate of privatization and a supporter of non-union schools.

Real Democrats don’t support charters and vouchers. These are Republican issues.

Public schools belong to the public, not to entrepreneurs or privatizers or profiteers or corporate chains or foreign entities.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Oakland, CA: Billionaires Will Convene to Discuss New Plans for Privatizing Public Schools

By dianeravitch
March 3, 2019 //
20

 

What exquisite timing! The teachers in Oakland went out on strike to demand a decent living wage and to protest the destruction of their schools by privatizers, and guess who is planning to come to town?

On May 8-9, the NewSchools Venture Fund will hold its annual summit in Oakland, California, to review its plans for additional privatization of public schools.

The summit is sponsored by the usual suspects: The Walton Family Foundation (anti-union, anti-public schools, pro-privatization), The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (ditto), The Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative (selling computers and depersonalized learning), and The Carnegie Foundation of New York (once a friend to public schools, but no longer).

Make plans to be in Oakland to send your greetings to the Robber Barons of our day.

Who knows? Maybe Betsy DeVos will be their keynote speaker.

They are planning to disrupt your public schools, destroy your unions, and continue marauding where they are uninvited and unwelcome.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Testing, Walton Foundation

California: Legislature Passes Historic Charter Accountability Bill

By dianeravitch
March 2, 2019 //
9

 

During Governor Jerry Brown’s tenure in office, he vetoed all efforts to hold charter schools accountable, to consider their fiscal impact, or to limit their numbers. Those days are over under Governor Gavin Newsom. 

Edsource reports:

“The chairman of the Assembly Education Committee and several Democratic colleagues introduced a package of bills Monday that would impose severe restrictions on the growth of charter schools.

“Three of the bills would eliminate the ability of charter schools to appeal rejected applications to the county and state, place an unspecified cap on charter school growth and enable school districts to consider the financial impact of charter schools when deciding whether to approve them. A fourth bill would abolish the right of a charter school that can’t find a facility in its authorizing district to locate a school in an adjoining district.

“Assemblyman Patrick O’Donnell, D-Long Beach, who chairs the Education Committee, said the bills collectively would enable school districts “to make responsible and informed decisions” that are “critical for student success and taxpayer accountability.” Eric Premack, a veteran charter school adviser and advocate, called the legislation a “full-frontal” assault and “scorched earth” approach to charter schools.”

”Scorched earth”=accountability, ethics, transparency.

At the heart of the strikes in Los Angeles and Oakland was the fiscal drain caused by runaway charter schools, which have operated and proliferated in the state without accountability for years.

The power of the charters was guaranteed by their lobby, the California Charter School Association, which spends $20 million a year to defeat accountability measures.

It’s a new day in California!

Elections have consequences. The charter lobby backed Antonio Villaraigosa for governor and Marshall Tuck for State Superintendent.Both lost.

Both houses of the legislature swiftly approved a bill to impose accountability and transparency on charter schools and Governor Gavin Newsom has promised to sign it. 

In the future, charters will be subject to the same open meetings laws and conflicts of interest laws as public schools.

More stringent regulation may be on the way, for example, one bill would no longer allow charter operators who were rejected by their district to appeal to the county, and if rejected by the county, appeal to the state board.

At present, charters may open without consideration of their fiscal impact on the public schools.

Also, a charter may be authorized by a district to operate in another district hundreds of miles away.

John Fensterwald writes in Edsource:

“Capitalizing on the momentum, this week O’Donnell and three other legislators announced four more bills that would restrict charter schools. They would eliminate the right of appeals to the county and the state, cap the number of schools to what’s operating now, let school districts reject charter schools based on their financial impact and prevent charter schools approved in one district from setting up in another.

“This week, the West Contra Costa Unified School District board followed the lead of boards in Los Angeles and Oakland to endorse some form of a moratorium on charter schools. Newsom has not indicated his position on the latest bills or on a moratorium, now that the bill on transparency has passed.”

Are the “days of wine and roses” coming to an end for the richly funded charter lobby?

This NPE report explains why charters in California need regulation and accountability.

Click to access NPE-Report-Charters-and-Consequences.pdf

Imagine a charter school in a shopping mall where students see a teacher once every 21 days. Imagine charter schools with graduation rates of 10% or less.

Imagine rampant fraud that goes unchecked for years.

Could these excesses finally be subject to oversight?

 

 

 

 

 

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

Jan Resseger: How Charter Schools Have Plunged Oakland into a Fiscal Crisis

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2019 //
21

Jan Resseger writes here about the cause of Oakland’s fiscal crisis: the expansion and encroachment of charter schools.

This context is important as background to understand the teachers’ strike.

She writes:

Like Los Angeles, Oakland’s financial crisis is related to California’s embrace of charter schools and the school district’s adoption of a portfolio school reform governance plan by which the district manages traditional public and charter schools as though they are investments in a stock portfolio. The idea is to establish competition—launching new schools all the time and closing low scoring schools and schools that become under-enrolled.  It is imagined that competition will drive school improvement, but that has not been the result anyplace where this scheme has been tried.

To better understand the issues underlying why Oakland’s teachers are on strike, it is worth examining Lafer’s in-depth profile of the Oakland Unified School District.

Lafer’s report explores the Oakland Unified School District as an exemplar of a California-wide and nationwide problem: Uncontrolled charter school expansion undermines the financial viability of the surrounding public schools. “In every case, the revenue that school districts have lost is far greater than the expenses saved by students transferring to charter schools.  The difference—the net loss of revenues that cannot be made up by cutting expenses associated with those students—totals tens of millions of dollars each year, in every district.” “California boasts the largest charter school sector in the United States, with nearly 1,300 charter schools serving 620,000 students, or 10 percent of the state’s total student body.”

“(W)ith a combined district and charter student population of over 52,000 in 2016-17—(Oakland) boasts the highest concentration of charter schools in the state, with 30 percent of pupils attending charter schools.” “By 2016-17, charter schools were costing OUSD a total of $57.3 million per year—a sum several times larger than the entire deficit that shook the system in the fall of 2017.  Put another way, the expansion of charter schools meant that there was $1,500 less funding available per year for each child in a traditional Oakland public school.”

Lafer identifies two problems at the heart of California’s enabling legislation for charter schools. First, a local school board has no control over whether charters can expand in the district: “Even when districts determine that there are already enough schools for all students in the community—or even if a charter operator petitions to open up next door to an existing neighborhood school—it is illegal for the district to deny that school’s application on the grounds that it constitutes a waste of public dollars. By law, as long as charter operators submit the required number of signatures, assurances against discrimination, and descriptions of their plans and program, school districts may only deny charter petitions for one of two substantive reasons: if ‘the charter school presents an unsound educational program,’ or ‘the petitioners are demonstrably unlikely to successfully implement the program set forth in the petition’”

The second problem, Lafer explains, is particularly serious as it impacts Oakland Unified School District: “While charter schools are required by law to accept any student who applies, in reality 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.  As a result, traditional public schools end up with the highest-need students but without the resources to serve them.  In Oakland, this can be seen in the distribution of both special education students and unaccompanied minor children who arrive in the district after entering the U.S. without their families.”

The problem is made worse because California does not allocate state funding based on the number of disabled students who require special services: “Special education funding is apportioned in equal shares for every student attending school, irrespective of the number of enrolled students with disabilities. Even in districts without charter schools, special education is an underfunded mandate, in that the dedicated funding for this purpose is insufficient to meet the needs that school systems are legally required to serve.”

Lafer reports that in 2015-16, Oakland’s charter schools served merely 19 percent of Oakland Unified School District’s students with special education needs: “The imbalance is yet more extreme in the most serious categories of special need.  Of the total number of emotionally disturbed students attending either charter or traditional public schools in Oakland, charter schools served only 15 percent.  They served only eight percent of all autistic students, and just two percent of students with multiple disabilities… Thus, charter schools are funded for a presumed level of need which is higher than the number of students with disabilities they actually enroll, while the district serves the highest-need students without the funding they require.”

The bottom line is that it is wasteful and inefficient to run two separate school systems, both funded by the public.

It is especially sad that Governor Jerry Brown, a progressive in so many ways, was blind to the depredations of the charter industry. He opened two charter schools where he was mayor of Oakland and never admitted that he was wrong.

 

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Oakland, Privatization, Teachers

Peter Greene: Republicans Plan to Eliminate Public Schools in Florida

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2019 //
35

Peter Greene paints an ugly picture of the dominant forces of privatization in Florida and their plans to destroy public education and share the spoils.

He begins by asking these questions:

Here are two not-entirely-academic questions:

Is it possible to end public education in an entire state?

Can Florida become any more hostile to public education than it already is?

Newly-minted Governor Ron DeSantis and a wild cast of privatization cronies seem to answer a resounding “yes” to both questions.

The trick they play is to say that anything funded by the public, no matter who owns it, runs it, or uses it, is “public,” by definition.

Florida has become a playground for for-profit entrepreneurs and religious zealots, and the new governor Ron DeSantis is on their team.

He describes the leaders of a group that calls itself the “School Choice Movement,” and they are people who never give a moment’s thought to the public interest or the common good.

There is a lot of dirty politics in the Sunshine State, and a good deal of money to line someone’s pockets. Up until now, the courts have blocked the goals of the privatizers, which directly violate the state constitution. But Governor DeSantis just replaced some of those pesky judges to get the courts out of his way.

Greene writes:

Calling charter schools public creates a nice batch of smoke and mirrors, allowing DeSantis and his cronies to privatize giant chunks of Florida’s school system while still proclaiming, “No need to worry. You still have public schools!” You could completely shift the education system to privately owned and operated schools while still reassuring parents, taxpayers, and, perhaps, courts, that you haven’t done a thing because it’s still all public schools.

It’s not just marketing. It’s stealing the Mona Lisa and hanging up a Polaroid picture of the painting in its place. It’s kidnapping your spouse and replacing them with an inflatable doll. It is a gaslighting of epic proportions.

In the meantime, Florida taxpayers, you probably should not try to just stroll into the public governor’s mansion you paid for or borrow one of those public vehicles that you bought for officials to drive around in (especially don’t try to commandeer a public army tank). Instead, I would keep a close eye on your public schools while you’ve still got them. And if it’s already too late in your county, don’t be sad– your loss of public education has at least made some of your leaders really wealthy.

And the rest of us need to pay attention, too. Remember– Betsy DeVos is among the many people who think Florida is an educational exemplar.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Fraud, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Sign a Petition to Change the Charter Law in California

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2019 //
1

Allies who met at the Oakland conference of the Network for Public Educare are petitioning to regulate charter schools so they don’t harm public schools.

 

Dear Friend of Public Education:

On behalf of Educators for Democratic Schools, and Wellstone Democratic Club Education Committee (both active in Oakland) we are writing again to those who participated in the California Caucus of the NPE conference and others interested in Charter School reform to enlist your support for reform of the Charter School Act. We are about to launch a statewide petition for the following specific changes to the Act:

 

  1. Add adverse fiscal impact as a basis on which districts may reject charter applications.

 

  1. Give locally elected school boards the sole authority to approve and renew charter school petitions.

 

  1. Require charter schools to enroll students with disabilities, including those with the most severe disabilities, English Language Learners, and newcomers, in equal proportion to the enrollment of these groups of students in the district in which the charter operates.

 

  1. Apply to charter school board members the same prohibition of conflicts of interest as apply to public school boards.

 

  1. Require charter schools to be more accountable and transparent and not force school districts to have to cede control of their facilities to charter schools.

 

You can sign the petition today by going to CharterLawReform.com.

 

We also created a suggested cover email for you here but if you want to create your own personal cover even better: Open in Docs

 

We are hoping that tomorrow each of you will join each of us and many other organizers throughout the state to send the petition out to all your friends, families, networks and organizations and ask them to sign as well.  Once someone signs and inserts their address it will automatically be directed to their state Senator and Assembly member as well as every member of the Education Committees of both bodies and the Governor.

 

Thank you in advance for your help and support!

 

David Weintraub, on behalf of

Educators for Democratic Schools

Wellstone Democratic Club Education Committee

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

Oakland Strike: Teachers and District at Odds About Privatization

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2019 //
4

 

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Statement by Keith Brown

President, Oakland Education Association,

on

Status of Contract Talks

 

I do not believe that it is helpful to bargain contracts through the media. Up until now I have refrained from discussing details to give the negotiating team on both sides room to bargain. However, after seeing a series of misleading reports come out of the administration today, I think it’s time to set the record straight.

 

The district says they have moved closer to OEA’s position on salary. Implied in their statement is that significant movement has happened since the strike began. This is untrue. The fact is they have yet to make an offer that will keep experienced teachers in Oakland.

 

The administration would lead you to believe this is only about salary. The state trustee has now joined this disinformation campaign.

 

Let me be clear, the union believes our students should have access to school nurses, counselors, school psychologists, librarians and other specialists. Class sizes are just too big and hinder the ability of our educators to give students the attention they deserve. These were also the issues on the table in the recent teachers’ strike in Los Angeles. In that strike, labor and management, with the help of outside mediators, crafted solutions that brought in dollars from the county and state to fund more nurses and counselors and lower class size. We should find similar creative solutions here.

 

We also join Los Angeles in their fight for a cap on the rapid expansion of charter schools that comes at the expense of much needed resources at our neighborhood public schools – to the tune of $57 million a year.

 

School closings are a critical issue in Oakland. It should be discussed at the bargaining table – they refuse.

 

The district’s bargaining team either lacks the creativity or the authority to craft solutions to our students’ needs and our educators’ demands.

 

We appreciate the Superintendent of Public Instruction’s dedication to finding a solution that puts our teachers and students front and center in this fight.

 

It is clear that the district does not have the support of parents and the community and are resorting to lies and misinformation to try to bring the public to their side. We ask that people be mindful of these tactics. We should expect more from our district officials. When 19 out of every 20 teachers is walking the picket line joined by parents, when our rallies attract thousands, when 97 percent of our students stay home – it’s clear that this community wants what OEA demands.

###

The Oakland Education Association represents 3,000 OUSD educators, including teachers, librarians, counselors, nurses, psychologists, psychiatric social workers, therapists, substitutes, and early childhood and adult teachers. OEA is affiliated with the 325,000-member California Teachers Association and the 3 million-member National Education Association.

 

Categories Accountability, Closing schools, Privatization

“Arizona Republic” Wins Prestigious Polk Award for Investigating Charter School Scandals

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2019 //
5

Arizona blogger David Safier reports that an investigative team of reporters at the Arizona Republic has won a prestigious Polk Award, one of the highest honors in American journalism, for its fearless reporting about charter school scandals in the state.

Safier writes:

The Arizona Republic’s thorough, ground-breaking stories about charter school corruption and profiteering have received scarce press coverage in southern Arizona from anyone but your faithful education blogger. That’s a serious omission. Though the stories tend to be based in Phoenix-area charter schools, they speak to statewide problems stemming from the lack of adequate charter regulation and oversight. One of the bad actors discussed in the series, for example, is state representative Eddie Farnsworth, who is making millions by selling his for-profit charters, which run on taxpayer dollars, to a non-profit company. That piece of news is definitely relevant everywhere in Arizona.

Also nearly absent in local reporting (I can’t say it hasn’t been reported, but I haven’t seen it) is the team of reporters who put together the articles that won the prestigious Polk Award in Journalism.

So let me be [among] the first in the southern Arizona news media to congratulate reporters Craig Harris, Anne Ryman, Alden Woods and Justin Price for sharing the honor, as well as the investigative editor Michael Squires.

The reporters received the Polk Education Reporting award, one of 14 Polk awards given in 2018, for:

“disclosing insider deals, no-bid contracts and political chicanery that provided windfall profits for investors in a number of prominent Arizona charter schools, often at the expense of underfunded public schools that educate all but 30,000 of Arizona’s 1.1 million students.”

This is one of those series that demonstrates the power of the press.

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