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Stephen Dyer: No Matter How You Spin the Numbers, Ohio’s Charters are Failing (Link Repaired!)

By dianeravitch
February 24, 2019 //
8

 

 

Stephen Dyer, former legislator and current fellow at Progress Ohio, reviews the latest CREDO report on Ohio charters and agrees with the overall conclusion that the performance of these schools is stagnant. A remarkable number are failing.

The Fordham Institute, which gets a hefty rebate as an authorizer of charter schools in Ohio, executes statistical backflips to spin the CREDO report and renew its report for more state funding.

But as Dyer shows, the charter sector in Ohio has an astonishing number of low-performing schools. They are getting better faster because their performance is rock bottom.

If Ohio had wise leadership, it would pull the plug on this failed experiment and not listen to self-interested lobbyists who are paid to advocate for more charter funding. It is his job, so you can’t blame him for trying, but his employer gets a cut for every student who enrolls in one of its charters.

There is good news in Ohio. The number of charter schools is declining as is enrollment in charter schools.

 

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

Peter Greene on the Tragedy of Lorain, Ohio, and the War to Stamp Out Local Control and Democracy

By dianeravitch
February 23, 2019 //
50

Who knew that Republicans hate local control of public schools? Who knew that the root cause of low test scores was the input of parents and teachers?

Peter Greene tells a story in this post that should be required reading for every course in education and for every state legislator. It is an unbearably sad story, and if it doesn’t make you angry, you aren’t paying attention.

http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2019/02/oh-lorain-hb-70-and-reformy-attack.html

Greene began his teaching career in Lorain, Ohio. At the end of his year, he and many other teachers were laid off and he moved on to teach in Pennsylvania, where he enjoyed a career that spanned nearly four decades. He remembers Lorain as a factory town, a functioning, multi-ethnic district with three high schools, seven middle schools, and many elementary schools. It was a strong union town, where most people worked in steel mills or auto plants.

Lorain was hit hard by deindustrialization. It was a small city that lost jobs and population.

He writes:

In 2016, my wife and I made a cross country trip. I’d not been back to Lorain (no reason to– I’d made no lasting relationships in my year, mostly because I ate, slept and drank my job), even though its a mere three hours away. The rows of factories are now rubble. My half-a-house apartment is now in a row of boarded-up empty buildings. The strip mall where I bought  albums, my first luxury purchase with my own teacher-pay money is empty. My old high school is a vacant lot. Lorain’s population is now around 63,000, a loss of about a quarter of their population from the mid-70s.

The drop started quickly and continued relentlessly for years. The school district adjusted. The three high schools became two, then one. But the local economy was shrinking so severely that by 2013, the school district was the second-largest employer in town,  behind the hospital. By the 2010s, reportedly 90% of the student population was free and reduced lunch (the standard proxy for measuring poverty).

Lawmakers in Ohio responded to the collapse of Lorain’s economy by declaring that its faltering schools were in “academic distress.” Its test scores were not good enough.

In 2007, Ohio created a new piece of turnaround legislation. The law created an academic distress commission, appointed by the state superintendent, the president of the school board, and the mayor of the city. ADC’s were responsible for coming up with a plan. They could fire and hire administrators and create a budget for the district. Lorain fell under the control of an ADC in 2013, but despite the employment of snazzy consultants, things didn’t seem to be improving. Some scores had started to creep up, but then changes in the state test– and how harshly it would be assessed– destroyed any forward momentum the district had developed.

It was several decades of tough challenges in the community and in the schools– and then, in 2015, that state of Ohio stepped in again to make things even worse.

The state passed a harsh and punitive bill called HB 70, which allowed the state to take over the district and install a tsar. Somehow the legislators imagined that the reason for low test scores was that local citizens had some say over what happened to their schools. Democracy was the problem.

Ohio’s old law called for an academic distress commission, appointed by the state superintendent, the president of the school board, and the mayor of the city. ADC’s were responsible for coming up with a plan. They could fire and hire administrators and create a budget for the district. Under HB 70, that changed dramatically. HB 70 is a corporate reformster’s dream law.

Under the new law, the ADC was required to appoint a CEO to run the district. The list of “include but not limited to” duties of the CEO runs to seventeen items, and they include:

Replacing administration and central office staff
Assigning employees to schools
Allocating teacher class loads and class sizes
Job descriptions for employees
Setting the school calendar
Setting the district budget
Setting grade “configuration”
Determining the school curriculum
Selecting instructional materials and assessments
Making reductions in staff
Establishing employee compensation

The law is nuts; it establishes the CEO as an unchecked tsar of the district with all the powers of both the superintendent and the school board. The only job requirement under the law is “high-level management experience in the public or private sector.” So he could be an education amateur. 

The state took over Lorain and Youngstown, then East Cleveland.

What happened next in Lorain was eye-popping. It was the Corporate Reformers’ dream come true: All authority vested in one person who was thoroughly immersed in Reformy organizations and philosophy and jargon:

Immediately, there were questions. The duly-elected, but now essentially powerless (except for one thing, and we’ll come back to that later) school board demanded information about the search process, conducted by Chicago-based Atlantic Research Partners with little-to-no transparency. ARP was co-founded by Joseph Wise, after he was fired from the superintendent post in Duval County, Florida for “serious conduct” deemed “injurious” which included “not communicating or acting in good faith with board members during budget discussions.” Wise also owns Acceleration Academies.

Of the five finalists, ARP had connections to four. One of the four was connected by virtue of attending the National Superintendents Academy, another property that Wise bought up. The National Superintendents Academy was previously known as SUPES Academy– a name you may remember from the massive scandal involving Barbara Byrd-Bennett and her federal indictment for bribery in Chicago. The twisty background is laid out here, but it underlines another aspect of the reformster world– multiple connections and always failing upward.

The National Superintendents Academy graduate was David Hardy, Jr., and his resume is loaded with reform credentials.

Hardy grew up in West Chester PA, the son of a teacher. He studied business at Colgate, but says an internship changed his mind about that. After graduating from Colgate with a BS in Economics and a secondary concentration in education and English, Hardy headed out for– what else– a Teach for America gig in Miami-Dade schools teaching reading and writing to 6th and 7th graders. After two years of that, he became the Miami-Dade Madison Middle School Language Arts Chair, where he took credit for raising the school’s grade from F to C. He ran a TFA summer institute, worked as a curriculum support specialist, and then went to work for Achievement First as a Dean of Students, consulted for the Children First Network, and then became the founding principal of Achievement First East New York Middle School. Then Chris Cerf tagged him to become the executive director of one of the seven Regional Achievement Centers in Camden responsible for the turnaround of thirty schools. Then chief of academic supports in Philly, then Deputy Superintendent of Academics in St. Louis Public Schools (where they have problems of their own)– his longest time in a single job, at a whopping four years. Hardy graduated from Colgate in 2003.

Along the way he picked up a Masters degrees in education administration, plus a masters and doctorate from Columbia in urban education leadership. And he was selected as a Future Chief by Chiefs for Change. And he’s connected to the Pahara Institute, which is connected to Aspen.

You can read Peter’s description of the big plans of Hardy and the TFA team he brought to Lorain. It will sound familiar to you from the experiences of so many other cities.

Peter concludes:

I didn’t set out to do a hatchet job on David Hardy and his administration, and it would be wrong to ignore the fact that he does have some support in the city. Some residents see the opposition to Hardy as racist, and at least one school board member has said that upon reflection, she supports the embattled CEO. It’s a contentious mess. When the state took over, some folks were pushed out of positions of power, and it’s reasonable to assume that they would not have been impressed if Jesus Christ Himself had taken over the district.

Certain phrases keep coming up in connection with Hardy, like “in over his head.” He can talk a good game (watch this interview from his St. Louis days), but if leading in a city system like Lorain requires relationship-building, Hardy is coming up short. The latest bombshell is not only a slap in the face to staff, but was handled about as poorly as it possibly could have been.

But it’s important to ask if HB 70 set David Hardy up for failure.

It’s a bad law. It was slipped past the legislature as an amendment in a late-night smoke-filled room arrangement that guaranteed that it would not be publicly discussed. And it is most certainly a full-on assault on public education in the state.

Youngstown, Lorain and now East Cleveland have one thing in common– they are among the poorest school districts in the state. As such, it’s unsurprising that they would have low scores on the Big Standardized Test and therefor low grades for their schools. HB 70 targeted poor communities, and it didn’t target them for help. It targeted them to be taken over, dismantled, and handed off to charter operators. The Lorain I knew has taken such a beating over the years, and HB 70 is the legislative equivalent of taking a beaten puppy and saying, “Look, dammit– fetch now or I am going to give your food to a prettier dog.”

Lorain needs help and healing. It does not need to have its teachers beaten down, its parents kept in the dark, its community held at arms length, its elected officials stripped of power. There is no special mystery to why Lorain’s schools are struggling, but HB 70 doesn’t address any of the root issues of a struggling local economy and a loss of resources. It is a law that punishes poverty rather than trying to ameliorate it.

I am trying to imagine what kind of high-quality leadership would make it possible to sell, “Hi! I’m from the state and I’ve been appointed to strip you of local power and chop your community schools up for someone else’s investment opportunity. Also, all the bad things that are happening are your fault, because your town sucks.” No, David Hardy isn’t very good at his job– but who could be good at the job that HB 70 has created? How do you lead well when HB 70 is fundamentally a punishing act of disrespect toward a local district?

HB 70 sets a district up for every bad corporate reform idea in the book. Test Scores! Visionary CEO! Transformation! Disruption! Spank teachers! Test scores! Strip local control! Expectations!  Test Scores! Kids first (but not really)! A smart person with marketworld skills from outside will be so much better than career educators! The state knows more about fixing schools than anyone! Also, test scores!

When gubernatorial candidate Dennis Kucinich visited Lorain last year, he suggested suing the state over HB 70, but that process is already under way. Youngstown has been leading the charge, and Lorain parents have gotten involved— at least on the petition level. The law was challenged in court almost immediately, initially decided in favor of the state, and worked up to the state supreme court which agreed to hear it last October. It also creates some unique issues– Youngstown’s school CEO would not allow the Youngstown board to spend money on the appeal. Lorain teachers filed a “friend of the court” brief as a party directly affected by the outcome, and several districts ands the Ohio School Boards Association have joined the suit.

Meanwhile, new Ohio governor Mike DeWine is sympathetic to some of the issues involved:

“One of the concerns, one of the things that we have seen in Youngstown, Lorain, is the obvious loss of local control, and we’re seeing some of the dynamics that result from the loss of local control. We are a very local government state,” DeWine said. “We like it that way, most of us do. Most of us think that problems get solved locally, so I’ve got some people working on this and we are working with some legislators on this, actually, but I really can’t go into any more details at this point.”

So there is at least some small bit of hope for Lorain and Youngstown and East Cleveland and every other poor Ohio community that was going to fall under HB 70 sooner or later. But if HB 70 ever goes away, those communities will still be facing all the problems they were facing before the state stepped in to help plus all the wreckage left by HB 70. The future is not going to be all rainbows and unicorns any time soon.

And the bitter irony in all of this is that, by many accounts, Lorain was climbing when the state stepped in. We’ll never know how they would have done if the state had just left them alone.

I came to really like Lorain in my brief time there. If things had worked out differently, I would have been glad to stay in that big little town. It deserved better than to be used and discarded by industry; its solid blue collar citizens deserved better as well. And they deserve better treatment by the state than to be thrown under a reform-driven bus that gives them exactly all the wrong things, everything but the support, assistance and resources that they need. This is corporate ed reform at its worst, disenfranchising citizens, trashing communities, and not even coming close to delivering what it promised as an excuse for the power grab.

I’ve kept up with Lorain, watching them in the news over the years ever since I left town right ahead of the industrial collapse. I’ll keep watching the news, hoping for good news from that beautiful little big city on the lake.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Ohio, Privatization

Conservative Journal EdNext Defends Outsourcing American Public Schools to Foreign Entities

By dianeravitch
February 23, 2019 //
19

The Gülen charter schools are one of the biggest chains in the U.S. They have about 160 or more schools. They usually claim they have no connection to Imam Fethullah Gülen, but they can be identified by the unusual number of Turkish teachers in the school, many using H1B visas; by the preponderance of Turkish men on their board of directors; by their inclusion of Turkish language in their curriculum; and by their preference to award contracts to Turkish-owned contractors, even when those firms were not the low bidder.

The Gulen schools call themselves by different names, but they are all somehow connected to a reclusive imam who lives in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania.

I don’t know whether the Gülen schools are good or bad schools, I just think it odd to outsource what are supposed to be American public schools to foreign nationals.

The conservative journal EdNext, funded largely by the conservative Hoover Institution, defends the Gülen charters and critiques those who would dare to criticize them. 

Should we outsource community public schools to Saudi Arabia? to Russia? to China? to North Korea? to Brazil?

Where would EdNext draw the line? Or do they think there should be no line at all? Why should America have public schools?

American public schools are supposed to teach civics, democratic values, and history. Can we turn that over to teachers who have never studied American history or civics? Is it a good idea to outsource our public schools? According to EdNext, yes.

For anyone who wants to learn more about the Gulen charter school movement, I recommend Mark Hall’s film, “Killing Ed” and parent activist Sharon Higgins’ investigative reporting about the Gulen schools. 

Some Gulen schools have been investigated by the FBI. Here is a 2012 report in the New York Times that EdNext won’t mention.

The writer was Stephanie Saul.

A group of three publicly financed charter schools in Georgia run by followers of Fethullah Gulen, a prominent Turkish imam, have come under scrutiny after they defaulted on bonds and an audit found that the schools improperly granted hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts to businesses and groups, many of them with ties to the Gulen movement.

The audit, released Tuesday by the Fulton County Schools near Atlanta, found the schools made purchases like T-shirts, teacher training and video production services from organizations with connections to school officials or Gulen followers. Those included more than $500,000 in contracts since January 2010 with the Grace Institute, a foundation whose board has included school leaders. In some cases the awards skirted bidding requirements, the audit said.

“I would just question how those vendors were selected when price in many instances wasn’t part of the decision making,” said the Fulton County superintendent, Robert Avossa, who criticized the schools for conflicts of interest. “And those are public dollars.”

Gulen followers run more than 120 charter schools nationwide, making the loosely affiliated network one of the nation’s largest public charter school operators. Despite clear connections, the schools generally deny any affiliation with the Gulen movement, a powerful religious and political force in Turkey whose leader, Mr. Gulen, views establishing schools as part of his mission. While some of the charter schools have been praised for their academic performance, their business practices have raised questions.

The New York Times reported last year that the group’s 36 Texas schools had granted millions of dollars in construction and renovation contracts to firms run by Turkish-Americans with ties to the movement, in some cases bypassing lower bids from firms with no connections to the movement. The Texas schools also awarded deals for cafeteria food, after-school programs and teacher training to organizations affiliated with Gulen followers.

The Georgia audit, posted to the Fulton County Schools Web site Tuesday evening, focused on the Fulton Science Academy Middle School in Alpharetta, Ga., a 500-student school that was recently denied a renewal of its public charter. The school, which had received $32 million in public funds over the past 10 years, said it would operate as a private school. While the audit does not lay out all of the relationships between contractors and the movement, a chart shows connections between the people running the schools, some of the vendors and Gulen-connected groups.

Dr. Avossa said that the audit’s findings had raised concerns about the group’s two other public charter schools in his district: Fulton Science Academy High School and Fulton Sunshine Academy, an elementary school.

He said a full audit would be conducted of those schools “to gauge whether similar wrongdoing is taking place.”

The three schools have enrolled 1,200 students representing a cross section of students in the Fulton County district.

Wells Fargo Bank, trustee of a $19 million bond issue by the schools, told investors on May 15 that the three schools were in default on those bonds. The bank said the default was caused by the group’s failure to disclose in its bond offering last year that its middle school charter renewal might have been in jeopardy. “The failure to disclose the ongoing concerns with Fulton Science Academy’s charter renewal petition constituted an omission of material facts in the public statement,” Wells Fargo said.

A default gives the bondholders the right to demand immediate payment, possibly requiring a liquidation of some school assets. The bonds are trading at about 70 percent of face value.

Concerns about governance and transparency were partly behind the district’s rejection of the Fulton Science Academy Middle School’s demand for a 10-year charter renewal. The school was named a “blue-ribbon” school last year by the federal government for its performance and appealed unsuccessfully to the state.

Kenan Sener, the school’s principal, said that the audit contained significant inaccuracies and that the school would issue a statement on Wednesday, after fully reviewing the document.

Nationwide, the charter schools have pursued an aggressive expansion plan, much of it financed by public bond issues, with the Texas schools borrowing more than $200 million through bond offerings.

In Texas, the group’s spending has been the focus of investigations by the State Legislature and the Texas Education Agency. The federal Department of Education is also investigating the Texas schools, apparently focusing on allegations of discrimination against Hispanic special education students in enrollment. The schools have denied wrongdoing.

One criticism of the schools involves their reliance on teachers imported from Turkey while teacher unemployment in the United States remains high. The audit said the Fulton Science Academy Middle School had paid $75,000 in immigration-related expenses for such employees.

Although the schools are inspired by Mr. Gulen and teach Turkish language and culture, they do not teach religion.

 

Categories Accountability, Citizenship, Civics, Education Industry, Education Reform, Gulen Charter Schools, Privatization

District of Columbia: Broadies Take Control of All Top Leadership Positions

By dianeravitch
February 23, 2019 //
21

 

The Edythe and Eli Broad Foundation now owns complete control of the schoolsof the District of Columbia.

With the appointment of Lewis Ferebee, former superintendent of Indianapolis, where he collaborated with the Mind Trust to expand privatization, D.C. is now a Broadie district.

DCist.com reports:

“The top three educational leaders in the District of Columbia all have one thing in common: they’ve all studied under a wealthy philanthropist’s educational leadership program that promotes a business perspective in the management of public schools and the use of charters.

“The D.C. state superintendent Hanseul Kang, the deputy mayor of education Paul Kihn, and acting schools chancellor Lewis Ferebee have each been through training at the Broad Center for the Management of School Systems, which houses both the Broad Academy and the Broad Residency in Urban Education.

“Those who support the training program say it offers a unique corporate-like training experience for school leaders and helps them form lasting friendships. Critics of the program say the teachings encourage school leaders to undermine democratic control of public education by making top-down reforms and promoting charter schools.

“There have been hundreds of school leaders that have gone through Broad training, including former DCPS chancellor Antwan Wilson. Kaya Henderson was also named a superintendent in residence at The Broad Center in 2017. But, if Ferebee is confirmed, this will be the first time all of D.C. Public Schools’ top public education leaders will be Broad scholars.”

Michelle Rhee started the Corporate Reform takeover of D.C. in 2007, imposing a harsh evaluation system that led to high turnover of teachers and principals. She was not a Broadie, however; she came out of Teach for America. But after she became a superstar, she joined the board ofthe unaccredited Broad Superintendents’ Academy.

Since 2007, the district has experienced major cheating scandals and, recently, a graduation rate scandal that cast doubt on many of the claims of success.

Despite it’s “reform” leadership, D.C. continues to havethe biggest achievement gaps of any district in the nation, about double the size of the black-white, Hispanic-white gaps in other urban districts.

There is something strangely satisfying about knowing that disciples of Eli Broad have taken complete control of D.C. They will have no one else to blame if they don’t turn the District into one of the nation’s top-performing  districts, as Rhee long ago promised.

 

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, District of Columbia, Education Industry, Privatization

Tom Ultican: Elites in Dallas Impose Massive Disruption on Public Schools, with Charters Schools and TFA

By dianeravitch
February 22, 2019 //
2

Tom Ultican tells a sad story about the takeover of the Dallas school board by the Dallas Chamber of Commerce and other wealthy elites, who don’t send their children to the public schools.

After their failed experiment with Mike Miles, a Broadie who surrounded himself with young but very well-compensated aides from TFA, the elites decided to buy control of the school board. It became too expensive for an ordinary citizen to compete with the money that the elites were pouring in. One candidate, Lori Kilpatrick, almost upset an incumbent, even though her resources were meager. The corporate elites decided not to take any chances in the run off. Her opponent won by outspending her 34-1.

The business elites have an agenda. Hire as many TFA as possible and drive out experienced teachers. Close public schools and replace them with charter schools. So far, none of their plans has benefitted the children of Dallas.

It is a sad story and I hope you will take the time to read it.

Tom Ultican often refers to the “Destroy Public Education” movement.

Dallas elites are in the forefront of that movement. Shame on them. They belong on the Wall of Shame.

Categories Charter Schools, Dallas, Disruption, Education Industry, Privatization, Teach for America, Texas

Texas: Are the Test Scores Rigged Against the Kids?

By dianeravitch
February 22, 2019 //
23

 

This is a fascinating article.

Mimi Swartz of the Texas Monthly asks an important question: Are Texas kids failing or are the tests rigged against them?  

Researchers with no axe to grind say the state tests are two grade levels above where the kids are. The state doesn’t agree.

State Commissioner of Education Mike Morath is not an educator, though he was a school board member in Dallas. He was appointed by rightwing Governor Gregg Abbott, a leader in the effort to defund and privatize public schools. Of course, he believes that public schools are  horrible and charters are wonderful. He will believe anything that puts public schools in a bad light, regardless of evidence or research. The legislature slashed the state budget by over $5 billion in 2011, and has never restored funding to where it was before the 2008 recession.

Swartz begins:

 

“Over the last few years, something strange has been happening in Texas classrooms. Accomplished teachers who knew their kids were reading on grade level by virtually all other measures were seeing those same kids fail the STAAR, the infamous State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness test.

“The effect on students was predictable: kids who were diligently doing their homework and making good grades in class were suddenly told they were failing in the eyes of the state, which wasn’t so great for their motivation. Parents were desperate to find out why their once high-performing kids were suddenly seen as stumbling. Teachers felt like failures, too, but had no idea what they were doing wrong, after years of striving to adopt practices proven in successful schools across the country. What’s more, the test results were quickly weaponized by critics of Texas public schools, many of whom advocate state-funded vouchers that would allow parents to send their kids to religious and other private schools.

“The stakes of such exams are perilously high. The STAAR test, developed by the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, N.J., had replaced one provided by the British firm Pearson, which Texas officials considered too easy. The STAAR test is used to evaluate students, teachers, individual schools and principals, school districts, and, by extension, the entire enterprise of public education in Texas. Fifth and eighth graders who fail the test can be forced to repeat a grade; high school students may not graduate if they don’t pass three of the five STAAR year-end exams.

“On its face, this approach makes sense. This is, after all, the Age of Accountability, and, according to Governor Greg Abbott and other prominent state leaders, only 40 percent of Texas third graders are reading at grade level. The STAAR numbers are cited as positive proof of that. Texas has to get its kids and its public schools up to the highest standards if we want to have the educated workers and informed citizens we need. There isn’t a minute to lose.

“This reasoning may explain why a report issued in 2012 by two associate professors at Texas A&M was overlooked. Called “STAAR Reading Passages: The Readability is Too High,” by Susan Szabo and Becky Sinclair, the report suggested that questions on the STAAR test were too hard to accurately measure whether students were reading at their grade level.

“The researchers’ examination of five different “readability tests”—commonly used academic measures that rate the appropriateness of written passages for various grade levels—showed, for instance, that in order to comprehend various passages, a third grader would have to read on a fifth-grade level. A fifth grader would have to read on a seventh-grade level, and so on. Generally, the testing showed a gap of about two years. Szabo and Sinclair’s paper made no waves. The STAAR test was new, and if there was a warning included in the research, no one in power thought to consider it. An organization called Texans Advocating for Meaningful Student Assessment lodged protests, but they were rebuffed.

“Years passed. The STAAR reading test reported more failures and stirred more concerns. Teachers and administrators continued to see that the STAAR scores didn’t “align” with other indicators of reading levels. Specifically, the numbers didn’t match those of the Lexile scale, which is regarded nationally as the standard gauge of any publication’s degree of difficulty. (Libraries use the Lexile scale to direct kids to age-appropriate books.)

“In 2016, another study was released, this time by Michael Lopez and Jodi Pilgrim, two professors at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, in Belton, Texas. They, too, found that readability formulas showed that the STAAR test contained too many difficult passages for the targeted age groups—“materials may be problematic for teaching and learning”—which confirmed what many teachers were seeing in their classrooms. That same year, a group of fifty Texas school superintendents lodged their protests with the Texas Education Agency (TEA), which administers the STAAR test.

“It’s easy, especially in Texas, to explain away some of the complaints as just so much whining. According to recent Education Week studies, our state ranks 40th in education quality. The blame for our sad showing has been placed on allegedly unqualified and unaccountable teachers, uninvolved parents, and corrupt administrators and school boards.

“But what if that showing isn’t as sad as we’ve been told? What if the STAAR test isn’t measuring what it says it’s measuring: i.e., that a third grader is reading at a third-grade level, rather than a fifth-grade level?….

“Morath did not respond to our request for an interview, but we were able to speak with Jeff Cottrill, TEA’s deputy commissioner of standards and engagement. He explained that TEA’s research on the STAAR reading test included early reviews by Texas teachers and students. “The test is rooted in Texas standards and reviewed by Texas teachers and field tested by Texas students,” Cottrill said. “I have to tell you the process by which TEA determines what goes in this test is solid.” Critics dismiss that method as nothing more than “a gut check,” as none of the test passages were run through standard readability measurements such as the Lexile. Cottrill confirmed that the test was not sent through a Lexile analysis. “TEA relies much more on people to assess the quality of the test than computer based algorithms… Some Dr. Seuss books are actually written at a higher Lexile than The Grapes of Wrath,” he said.

“The Lexile scale was not the only readability test by which researchers outside the TEA have evaluated the STAAR reading test. Dee Carney, the Austin testing expert, pointed out that the A&M research used five readability studies and the Mary Hardin-Baylor research used six. Chambers [the superintendent of the Alief district and president of the Texas School Alliance, representing the state’s largest districts] says new research conducted at A&M is to be released in the next few months and shows even more misalignment, or failing kids, today than in 2012. “If the decision was made to test kids in reading passages that are above their grade level, everyone needs to know that,” Chambers said. “If a third grade reading test is meant to determine if a student is reading at the third grade level, then the test questions should be based solely on what was taught in [and before] third grade, not what might be taught in the fourth, fifth, sixth, or seventh grade.”

“The consequences, Chambers said, can be severe. “To me, here is the bottom line: if Texas expects every third grader to read like a fifth grader or every fourth grader to read like a sixth grader, then we all need to be prepared to see lower performance. Based on all the expert information that has been provided, these unrealistic standards have the potential to destroy learning.”

 

Question from me: can anyone name a book by Dr. Seuss that has a higher Lexile level than “Grapes of Wrath”?

Proposal: How aboutif Governor Abbott, Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, and Superintendent Morath agree to take the tests in English and math and publish their scores? 12th grade? Eighth grade? How about it, guys?

 

 

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Privatization, Testing

Oakland: Day One of the Strike for Higher Pay, Student Services, and an End to Privatization

By dianeravitch
February 21, 2019 //
1

Just in from the Oakland Education Association:

 

 

Mike Myslinski

Headquarters Communications

California Teachers Association

1705 Murchison Drive

Burlingame, CA 94010

650-552-5324

408-921-5769 (cell)

www.cta.org

 

NEWS RELEASE 

February 21, 2019

 

Oakland Education Association

272 East 12th Street

Oakland, CA 94606

510-763-4020

www.oaklandea.org

 

Contacts:

–Jamie Horwitz at 202-549-4921, jhdcpr@starpower.net

–Mike Myslinski with CTA on cell at 408-921-5769, mmyslinski@cta.org

 

On Twitter: @oaklandea, #Unite4OaklandKids, #WeAreOEA, #RedForEd, #WeAreCTA

OEA on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OaklandEA/

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Oakland Teachers STRIKE Today

Seek smaller classes, more nurses and counselors, an end to school closings—along with living wage for educators in rapidly gentrifying city

 

OAKLAND – This morning, joined by parents and other allies across the city of Oakland, the 3,000 members of the Oakland Education Association went on strike with picket lines at all 86 district schools and at the central administration building.

 

A noon solidarity rally drew thousands of supporters at Oakland City Hall on Frank Ogawa Plaza. The crowd of teachers, parents, students and other allies then marched to the nearby headquarters of the Oakland Unified School District. Watch for video of the rally on the OEA Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/OaklandEA/

 

In an op-ed Wednesday in the San Francisco Chronicle, in an interview with the Washington Post, and in remarks to media on the picket line at Manzanita Community School this morning, OEA President Keith Brown summed up why teachers are on the strike lines this way, “You can’t feed the minds of our students by starving their schools.”

 

The educators’ union sees this strike as a fight for a better future for Oakland’s 37,000 students, rather than the traditional give and take over wages and benefits for educators. Key issues on the bargaining table relate to demands for smaller class sizes and the resources students deserve, such as access to counselors, school nurses, librarians and school psychologists.  For example, there is currently only one counselor for every 600 students, and only one nurse for every 1,750 students.

 

Like the statewide teachers strike this week in West Virginia, charter schools are an issue. Oakland teachers question why the Oakland Unified School District has signed on to schemes promoted by wealthy politically connected outside donors, diverting $57 million annually to unaccountable charter schools while starving public schools in local communities and closing some schools.

 

The union has gained the support of parents from across the district, many of whom walk their children to school or are reliant on public transportation, who do not want to lose their neighborhood public school. The Oakland school board has proposed closing 24 of the district’s 86 schools. The schools targeted for closure are in predominantly African American and Latinx neighborhoods.

 

While wages have been an issue in other teacher strikes over the past year, the wage issue in Oakland is different from earlier strikes. The rapid gentrification of the city of Oakland, largely due to the tech boom in the Bay Area has driven up the cost-of-living and outpaced the increase in wages for educators. Rent for a basic one-bedroom apartment would take up 60 percent of a starting teacher’s paycheck. Zillow estimates a one-bedroom apartment in Oakland goes for $2,680 in rent per month.

 

The OEA is demanding a 12 percent wage increase spread over three years. Right now, Oakland educators are the lowest paid in Alameda County. Teachers have been working without a contract since July 2017.

 

The union and district negotiator are next scheduled to meet Friday morning. No contract talks are planned for today.

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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 Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Capitol & Main: Yes, West Virginia, There Is a Teachers Union, and It’s Angry!

By dianeravitch
February 21, 2019 //
5

Bill Raden and Eunice Park wrote today’s roundup of education news for the excellent California-based website “Capitol & Main.”

Everyone should subscribe to it, or for sure, read it regularly.

This is an astonishing post, as you will read. LAUSD Board Member Nick Melvoin ran as a “liberal,” but he cites ALEC model legislation! Austin Beutner was forced to release a contract with an organization best known for privatizing the public schools of Camden, New Jersey. And let us not forget the more than half a million dollars collected by former Newark superintendent Cami Anderson (appointed by former Governor Chris Christie) to consult on special education services. The tight connections between alleged Democrats and rightwing Republicans never ceases to amaze.

“Yes, West Virginia, there is a teachers union, and it’s still fighting mad.” That was the message for Mountain State lawmakers this week when thousands of West Virginia teachers and school workers walked off the job to kill a privatization bill reputedly written in retaliation for last year’s historic nine-day teachers strike. Only hours into the Tuesday-Wednesday walkout, the state’s House of Delegates voted 53 to 45 to indefinitely table Senate Bill 451, which had linked a teacher pay raise to the gutting of job security and a first-time legalization for West Virginia of charters and private school vouchers. “Instead of trying to treat a symptom with garbage legislation that isn’t even vetted or proven to work,” Logan County teacher Kristina Gore told New York magazine, “let’s brainstorm some legislation to fix the real problem — the social conditions in which our children live.”

All eyes now turn to the East Bay, where over 3,000 Oakland Unified educators walked off the job today, following the recommendations issued last Friday by a neutral fact-finding panel, which agreed with key union bargaining positions but was unable to break the deadlock. “Years of underfunding, the unregulated growth of the charter school industry and district neglect [have] starved our schools of the necessary resources,” OEA president Keith Browncharged at a Saturday press conference. In addition to a 12 percent raise over three years, the union is asking for class size reductions, more support staff and is opposing extreme austerity measures that could shutter up to 24 OUSD neighborhood schools.

That OUSD chopping block was the subject of Tuesday’s almost Dickensian Oakland school board meeting in which a procession of tearful parents, students, teachers, activists and education leaders pleaded with trustees to spare programs targeted for cuts. School libraries, the district’s restorative justice and foster youth programs, and its Asian Pacific Islander Student Achievement services have all been slated for deep reductions in the current, $21.75 million round of budget cuts. The final vote comes February 25.

A murky scheme to transform Los Angeles Unified into a“portfolio” or “network” school district became a little more transparent last week when LAUSD suddenly released a torrent of documents related to superintendent Austin Beutner’s “Re-Imagine LAUSD” reorganization plan. After months of stonewalling on California Public Records Act requests from news media and BD 3 school board member Scott Schmerelson, the office of LAUSD General Counsel David Holmquist released hundreds of pages of Re-Imagine contracts and memoranda after Schmerelson upped the ante by introducing a resolution reprimanding the superintendent for his “lack of transparency and responsiveness.” That measure passed in a 5-1 vote Tuesday after board members soundly rejected BD 4 member Nick Melvoin’s attempt to resurrect an old ALEC model law attack on teacher job security called “mutual consent.”

The most eye-popping of the PRAs is LAUSD’s 24-page, $765,000 contract with national portfolio district retrofitters Kitamba. The company, which also designed the portfolio transformation of Camden, New Jersey schools that has turned that district into a parent-versus-parent war zone, was engaged to implement a performance-based rating system that, under the portfolio system of governance, is used by district “network leaders” to justify closing and replacing low-testing public schools — usually with charters. Kitamba CEO Rajeev Bajaj, who may be best remembered in New Jersey for his connection to a conflict-of-interest scandal involving former Newark schools chief Christopher Cerf, is leading the LAUSD effort.

 

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

L.A. Teachers Will Rally on Behalf of Oakland Teachers

By dianeravitch
February 21, 2019 //
5

Oakland teachers are striking for higher wages and against school privatization by rapacious charters. A study by Professor Gordon Lafer of the University of Oregon showed that the Oakland district lost $57.4 million last year to charters.

 

MEDIA ADVISORY
Contact: Kim Turner, 213-305-9316, UTLA communications

LA teachers, supporters show solidarity with Oakland Strike

LOS ANGELES — Tomorrow morning, teachers and supporters across all schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District will show massive solidarity with the brave educators on strike in Oakland.

Like United Teachers Los Angeles members, Oakland educators are fighting to reinvest in public education and reject a privatization agenda. The Oakland Unified School District is claiming a fiscal crisis to justify closing schools and denying educators a decent pay raise, lower class sizes, and more support in the classroom. A key driver of Oakland’s budget crisis is the unregulated expansion of the charter industry, which the superintendent wants to step up — draining more funds and threatening the survival of the system.

“As the teacher strike wave continues to gather momentum, we stand with our brothers and sisters in Oakland, who are taking on the ‘broke on purpose’ agenda to dismantle and close neighborhood public schools,” said Alex Caputo-Pearl, UTLA President. “They are fighting for the heart and soul of public education, and we stand with the more than 3,000 Oakland teachers who are striking for the schools their students deserve.”

Friday’s picketing continues to put pressure on Sacramento and Governor Gavin Newsom to take two actions to protect public schools in Oakland, here in LA, and up and down California:
• increase education funding in the state budget.
• support an immediate cap on the unregulated growth of the charter industry, which threatens the fiscal stability of public school districts throughout the state.

What: PICKETING, PARENT LEAFLETING & PRESS CONFERENCE

Date: Friday, February 22, before school
Time: 7:15 AM
Where: South Gate High School, 3351 Firestone Blvd, South Gate, CA 90280
Who: Teachers, parents and students; Alex Caputo-Pearl, UTLA President; Randi Weingarten, AFT President; Jackie Goldberg, former school board member and state assemblymember; Fidencio Gallardo, SGHS Teacher and Bell Mayor
Visuals: People chanting and marching with signs

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

Los Angeles: District Releases Secret Contracts with Vendors, in Response to Pressure from Board Member

By dianeravitch
February 21, 2019 //
4

 

Scott Schmerelson is a hero of public education. I add him to the blog’s honor roll. He has singlehandedly forced transparency on a superintendent and school board that is trying to hide basic facts about the district. First, he released the fact that 82% of all charter schools in Los Angeles have vacancies while the LAUSD board (bought by Eli Broad and friends) echoed the false claim about long waiting lists. No long waiting lists. Many vacancies. No need for new charters.

Then he forced the Superintendent Austin Beutner to release a list of secret payments to vendors who are helping him develop his plan to disrupt and disorganize the district.

Mr. Beutner, who is an equity investor from the private sector, apparently didn’t realize that public business is conducted in public, not behind closed doors or in secret.

One of the reasons that the cost of education rises while teachers’ pay is stagnant is because of the diversion of public funds to consultants who go from district to district, selling services that are not needed or that have failed repeatedly. Or just plain old cronyism.

Howard Blume wrote in the Los Angeles Times:

Outside consultants working on a plan to restructure the Los Angeles Unified School District were asked to develop a performance-based rating system for schools and to shift hiring and purchasing of services from the central district office to local campus networks, according to confidential contracts provided to The Times.

The contracts were released last week in response to repeated requests since October from Board of Education member Scott Schmerelson. The consultants’ work was not disclosed, but Schmerelson plans to continue to press to make it public.

District officials had declined requests from the Times and others to make the contracts public as Supt. Austin Beutner developed his reform plan, which he said is meant to save money and improve student success by bringing decision-making and resources closer to the campus level.

The contracts also became an issue in the weeks leading up to the January teachers’ strike, when union leaders and their members expressed concern about where Beutner — a businessman with no background in education management — would take the nation’s second-largest school system.The contracts total $3 million so far, with the largest amounts going to Ernst & Young ($1.5 million), which specializes in business services and consulting, and the Kitamba Group ($765,000), whose focus is education. The agreements are being administered by the nonprofit California Community Foundation and paid for by private donors, including the Ballmer Group, the California Community Foundation, the California Endowment, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and the Weingart Foundation.

According to its contract, Ernst & Young’s mission was to analyze how the district can better use resources and cut costs in purchasing, food services, technology and transportation, as well as deal with work-related injuries and adjust its general financial practices. The work was to be completed, with a full report, before the end of November. It is not clear if that timetable was met.

Kitamba was to have developed a working definition of a “great school” and to have designed a “network structure” by the end of 2018. The Times reported in November that Beutner was considering assigning all schools to one of about 32 different networks.

Kitamba’s contract also said the company would help the district develop a way for officials to discuss giving letter grades to schools, ranking them on a 100-point scale or assigning them a color to denote their status. Kitamba was also to have developed measures that could be taken when a school fell short of standards. The triggers for taking action were to be developed in draft form by last September.

By December of 2018, each school was to have a performance rating along with a summary explanation. The goal by mid-February, according to Kitamba’s contract, was to “engage” on the plan with central office and school staff as well as with students and families. A media campaign also was due to roll out, with the new school networks slated to launch next September.

The Kitamba contract also proposed that each school network be allowed to choose or refuse “services” from the central office. The proposal does not specify which services, or say where the services would come from if the networks reject the central district’s offerings.

But the New York City school system tried a similar plan, starting in 2007, allowing local nonprofits to compete against the district to provide services. After about eight years, New York abandoned the plan, which cut costs but did not improve student achievement.

Kitamba, in the contract documents, cited its previous work in Midland, Texas as an example of how it would carry out its duties. In Midland and some other Texas school districts, schools or networks of schools are supposed to have autonomy, but individual schools are rated every year and there can be serious consequences for those with low student achievement.

The Texas plan calls for creating new schools, replicating successful ones and “restarting” struggling ones.

A $595,000 restructuring contract was also awarded to former Newark schools Supt. Cami Anderson to make services to students with disabilities cheaper and more effective.

KUDOS to Howard Blume for excellent reporting which digs below the surface of the LAUSD claims.

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Education Industry, Ethics, Honor Roll, Los Angeles, Privatization
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