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Nathan Robinson: Race to the Top was a Disaster That Should Never Be Repeated

By dianeravitch
February 3, 2019 //
55

 

 

This article by Nathan Robinson, editor of “Current Affairs,” brilliantly explains why Race to the Top was not only a failure but a disaster.  

Schools in Detroit were crumbling, but Detroit got not a penny of the windfall.

Here is a sample:

“There is something deeply objectionable about nearly every part of Race To The Top. First, the very idea of having states scramble to compete for federal funds means that children are given additional support based on how good their state legislatures are at pleasing the president, rather than how much those children need support. Michigan got no Race to the Top money, and Detroit’s schools didn’t see a penny of this $4.2 billion, because it didn’t win the “race.” This “fight to the death” approach (come to think of it, a better name for the program) was novel, since “historically, most federal education funds have been distributed through categorical grant programs that allocate money to districts on the basis of need-based formulas.” Here, though, one can see how Obama’s neoliberal politics differed in its approach from the New Deal liberalism of old: Once upon a time, liberals talking about how to fix schools would talk about making sure all teachers had the resources they needed to give students a quality education. Now, they were importing the competitive capitalist model into government: Show results or find yourself financially starved.

“The focus on “innovation,” data, and technology is misguided, too. Innovation is not necessarily improvement—it’s easy to make something new that isn’t actually any better. The poor learning outcomes of online courses are evidence that sometimes the old methods are best. An Obama administration report on how schools innovated in response to RTT is mostly waffle about “partnering with stakeholders” but also contains descriptions of “21st century” measures like the following:

The majority of Race to the Top states reported to the RSN that they are using or expanding their use of social media communication to keep stakeholders engaged and informed. Ohio, for example, embraced Twitter to communicate with teachers, principals and district leaders during its annual state conference in 2012. “One of the keys to success on Twitter is tweeting a lot — five to seven times a day — morning, noon and at night,” said Michael Sponhour, executive director of communications and outreach for the Ohio Department of Education (ODE). Ohio measures its success on Twitter by the number of tweets that are “retweeted” by its followers; about 70 percent of ODE’s tweets are retweeted, he said.

“So people at state departments of education are being paid to tweet morning, noon, and night, with nearly ⅓ of the tweets not getting so much as a single retweet, while St. Louis’ beautiful old public school buildings are closed, abandoned, and auctioned off. Delaware “was able to use RTT funds to place data coaches in every school,” even as the steam pipe kept leaking onto that playground in Detroit.

“The pro-RTT literature promotes the education reform line of Bill Gates and charter advocates, stressing the need for “accountability” and “evaluation.” There is a mistrust of teachers: The premise here is that unless teachers have the right incentives, they will perform badly. There is an underlying acceptance here of the free market principle that government services do not perform well because they lack the kind of economic rewards and punishments that exist in the private sector. So we should introduce competitive marketplaces in schools (i.e., charterize the system) and do constant assessments of teacher job performance to weed out the Bad Teachers. Race To The Top literature talks about “turning around failing schools,” not “fixing inequality in schools,” and some civil rights activists criticized the program for failing to consider school segregation and inequality in its picture of the country’s educational woes. …

”RTT was wrong in a thousand ways. It prioritized data collection for its own sake, and in spite of its focus on “achievement” and evidence-based policy, didn’t actually boost achievement and wasn’t based on evidence. It was just free market ideology. Instead of talking about adding yet more assessments of teacher performance, we should be talking about the fact that teachers across the country have to buy their own school supplies, and the profession offers too much work for too little pay to attract good candidates who will stay for the long term. No more races to the top. What we need is a race to make sure every school has a music teacher, every building is safe and beautiful and well-maintained, every child is well-fed, every classroom is full of books and supplies, and every teacher has what they need in order to help children discover the world of knowledge.“

 

 

 

 

Categories Data, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Obama, Privatization, Race to the Top

West Virginia: Gov. Justice Promised to Block Charter Schools But He Lied

By dianeravitch
February 2, 2019 //
7

 

During last spring’s historic teacher walkout in West Virginia, which closed every school in the state, Governor Jim Justice promised to block charter legislation.

https://www.register-herald.com/news/republicans-vote-down-democratic-amendments-on-charter-schools-esas/article_e531ec82-0c49-5fd7-8da3-39103fd1826a.html

He lied.

The legislature is set to pass both charters and vouchers.

Trachers in charters won’t need certification. Vouchers will include home schooling. Both bills mean less funding for the state’s underfunded public schools.

Gov. Justice could veto the bill but would it have gotten this far without his support?

He lied.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Lies, Privatization, Teachers, Vouchers, West Virginia

Dana Goldstein: In 13 Years of Covering Education, the World Has Changed

By dianeravitch
February 2, 2019 //
52

 

Dana Goldstein has been covering education for 13 years. At the beginning of her career, bashing teachers’ unions and praising charters was in. Now red-shirted teachers have canceled that narrative and reminded her (not me) that only 6% of the nation’s children are in charter schools. 

She doesn’t reflect on the damage that charters do to public schools by diverting resources from them and leaving them with fixed costs, larger classes, feeer teachers.

She writes:

I first met Alex Caputo-Pearl, the strike-leading president of the Los Angeles teachers’ union, in 2011, when I shadowed him for a day at Crenshaw High School.

I was working on a book about the history of public school teaching, and Mr. Caputo-Pearl, then a social studies teacher, had a fascinating personal story. He had served in the very first class of Teach for America recruits, in 1990, and was part of a small group of original T.F.A. members who were, 20 years later, still working in urban public school classrooms.

But Mr. Caputo-Pearl didn’t remain in the Teach for America fold. He became a union activist and a critic of T.F.A., charter schools and the entire landscape of test-driven accountability for children and educators. At Crenshaw High, he helped develop a social-justice curriculum in which students organized their learning around the question of how to improve conditions in their low-income South Los Angeles neighborhood. It was unapologetically activist — outside the mainstream of what education reform looked like at the time.

The school district later ended that program, and in 2014, Mr. Caputo-Pearl was elected president of the United Teachers Los Angeles, the local union. He represented a new, more militant generation of teachers’ union leaders. This month, he led 30,000 educators in a weeklong strike for higher pay and more classroom funding, and against the growth of the charter school sector. It’s a story I covered with Jennifer Medina, my fantastic National desk colleague in Los Angeles, and our editors Julie Bloom, Dave Kim and Marc Lacey.

I’ve been reporting on education for 13 years, but I am absolutely stunned by the extent to which teachers’ strikes and walkouts are now a day-to-day part of my job. The Los Angeles action was the eighth mass teacher protest I’ve reported on in just 11 months, shutting down schools for one million students across the country. The reappearance of Mr. Caputo-Pearl in my professional life was just one of several uncanny moments that have made me, at age 34, feel old in beat-reporter years. So much has changed in education, as the focus shifts from calling out and overhauling bad teachers and schools to listening more carefully to what educators say about their working conditions and how students are affected by them.

I was at the Democratic National Convention in 2008, when one of the hottest tickets was to a panel discussion in which rising stars in the party, including Cory Booker, then the mayor of Newark, spoke harshly of teachers’ unions and their opposition to charter schools, which are publicly funded, privately run and generally not unionized. Union leaders argue that charters draw public dollars and students away from traditional schools like Crenshaw High.

Back then, it was hip for young Democrats to be like Barack Obama, supportive of school choice and somewhat critical of teachers’ unions. But now, the winds have changed pretty drastically. The revival of democratic socialism within the party has left many elected officials — even Mr. Booker — much more hesitant, it seems, to critique organized labor. Across the country, red-clad teachers on strike, sometimes dancing and singing, have won the affection of grass-roots progressives over the past year, leading to a new political dynamic around education, just as the Democratic primary field for 2020 emerges. The emphasis now is on what education experts call “inputs” — classroom funding, teacher pay, and students’ access to social workers and guidance counselors — and less on “outputs,” like test scores or graduation rates.

The truth is, both inputs and outputs are important. In some ways, continuing to cover the war between union leaders and charter school supporters frustrates and exhausts me. Charter schools are a growing part of our educational landscape because parents are always looking for more good options when it comes to how and where to educate their children. On the other hand, while politicians and wealthy philanthropists have always given outsize attention to charters, they educate just about 6 percent of American public school children, some three million students. In many ways, the battle is ideological, over what role choice should play in our education system. Will public-sector competition between charters and traditional schools lead to improvement, or simply provoke a melee over scarce taxpayer dollars? So far, both outcomes, I’ve observed, are very real across the country.

A few months ago, I was doing research in The Times’s digital archives when I came across our 1995 obituary of Fred Hechinger, an eminent education reporter and columnist here. I printed it out and clipped a paragraph, which I keep at my desk for inspiration whenever my energy flags after more than a decade on this beat.

“I began to realize that a country’s approach to education in general, and especially to its children, could tell more about its social, political and economic background than a whole battery of interviews with politicians,” Mr. Hechinger once said.

He was right. So I continue on.

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

Nevada Chief Resigns, after Failure as Charter Cheerleader

By dianeravitch
January 31, 2019 //
1

 

Nevada’s State Commissioner Steve Canavero and two of his deputies are leaving.

“Nevada’s K-12 system consistently ranks as one of the worst-performing in the nation, according to NAEP scores and Education Week‘s Quality Counts. This has frustrated state and local politicians, technocrats and practitioners and led to a series of ambitious efforts over the years to improve the system.

“Canavero, whose last day will be Feb. 6, was appointed by former Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval to be the state’s interim superintendent in 2015 and hired full time into the role in 2016.  He has overseen the creation of the state’s plan under the Every Student Succeeds Act, the start of a state-run district that oversees some of the state’s worst-performing schools, and a debate over how expansive the state’s charter sector should be. “

Canavero loved charters and created a Nevada version of Tennessee’s failed Achievement School District. It was a disaster. Charters in Nevada are the lowest performing schools in the state.

 

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

Justin Parmenter: School Choice in North Carolina

By dianeravitch
January 31, 2019 //
2

Justin Parmenter, an NBCT high school teacher in North Carolina, writes here about the rapid expansion of charter schools in his state, which is doing serious damage to public schools. Charters were not promoted in North Carolina but by Tea Party Republicans who want to destroy public schools and make money.

Charter schools are playing a damaging role in North Carolina, acting as a vehicle for resegregation of the schools.

He begins:

This week is National School Choice Week, and you’re going to hear a lot of charter school proponents talking about what a great thing choice is for families when it comes to education. Folks who are opposed to unchecked charter expansion will be derisively labeled ‘anti-choice,’ as if their views run counter to American democratic values. But the charter movement in our state is deeply problematic, and it’s important that we have a fact-based conversation about it.

On its face, choice sounds good. We expect it when we go to the store for salad dressing, when we’re looking at books at the library, or when we’re holding the tv remote. What kind of person could possibly be against others having the freedom to make choices when it comes to their children’s education? But what happens when the choices I’m making have a negative impact on those around me? What happens when those choices don’t occur in a vacuum?

Charter schools were originally intended as places of innovation, where educators could develop new approaches in a less regulated setting and collaborate with traditional public schools to improve outcomes for all. In some states, charter schools have been able to stay relatively true to that mission. Not so in North Carolina.

On a systems level, the good that charter schools are able to do is determined 100% by the policies that govern them. In North Carolina, charter school policy is a mess, and that mess is leading to some really bad outcomes for our children.

Since the cap on charter schools was lifted by North Carolina’s state legislature in 2012, the number of charter schools in the state has nearly doubled. This year we have 185 charter schools in operation, serving more than 100,000 students across the state (overseen by a staff of 8 people). Next year we’ll have 200.

The rapidly expanding charter schools siphon money away from traditional public schools and reduce what services those public schools can offer to students who remain, according to a recent Duke University study. As students leave for charters, they take their share of funding with them–but the school district they leave is still responsible for the fixed costs of services such as transportation, building maintenance and administration that those funds had supported. Districts are then forced to cut spending in other areas in order to make up the difference. In Durham, where 18% of K-12 students attend charter schools, the fiscal burden on traditional public schools is estimated at $500-700 per student. As the number of charters increases, so will that price tag.

While charter schools in some states have been used successfully to improve academic performance for low-income students, in North Carolina they’ve been used predominantly as a vehicle for affluent white folks to opt out of traditional public schools. Trends of racial and economic segregation that were already worrisome in public schools before the cap was lifted have deepened in our charter schools. Now more than two thirds of our charter schools are either 80%+ white or 80%+ students of color. Charter schools are not required to provide transportation or free/reduced-price meals, effectively preventing families that require those services from having access to the best schools.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, North Carolina, Privatization, Segregation

Washington State: Charters Fail to Make a Difference

By dianeravitch
January 31, 2019 //
17

“

 

Poor Bill Gates. He has poured billions into reinventing education, and nothing has worked. Nothing! Not even in his home state.

One of his fondest desires was to open charter schools in Washington State. He poured millions into a referendum (the fourth in the state), and it barely passed. Then the highest court in the state said the charters couldn’t be supported by the general fund, because they are not really public schools. Public schools have elected boards. At last, he gently persuaded the legislature to tap into the lottery money to pay for Bill’s charters.

But, as Carol Burris writes, the charters did not outperform public schools and did not close achievement gaps.

Oh, woe. Poor Bill!

Burris writes:

“The 2012 initiative was Washington State’s fourth charter school ballot initiative. The previous three attempts failed — in 1996 (64.43 percent opposed to 35.57 percent in favor), 2000 (51.83 percent opposed to 48.17 percent in favor), and 2004 (58.3 percent opposed to 41.7 percent in favor).

“The fourth and final attempt was not pushed by the parents of Washington State. It was pushed and funded by billionaires. The collection of signatures to get the charter initiative on the ballot was a well-coordinated effort that cost nearly $2.5 million.

“Funders of the initiative included Microsoft founder Bill Gates (who contributed over $1 million) and California billionaire Reed Hastings of Netflix. A dark-money group based in New York — Education Reform Now Advocacy, an arm of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) — contributed large sums as well.

“Without the financial push by billionaires both within and outside the state, the initiative, which barely passed on the fourth attempt, would likely have failed, as did the three previous efforts.

“Let’s fast forward to 2019. What was the outcome for all of those millions contributed allegedly on students’ behalf?

“The Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University, which is funded by pro-charter organizations, recently issued its report comparing the academic growth over a three-year period of students in Washington’s charter schools when compared with their true public school (TPS) counterparts. What it found was that charter school students did no better.

“From that report:

“Over that time, the typical charter school student in Washington demonstrated no statistically different academic growth in reading and math when compared to their exact-match counterpart in nearby district schools (TPS). The trend across the two growth periods shows a slight downward trend in reading and math as the number of students served grew. The finding of no meaningful difference in learning gains held across most of the different student groups within the charter population. Only English language learners [ELLs] experience significantly higher learning gains associated with charter school attendance. Other student subgroups such as students in poverty, Black students, and Hispanic students experience non-significant positive gains on average. “

“It should be noted that the small gains experienced by English Language Learners disappeared when Hispanic ELLs in charters were compared with Hispanic ELLs in public schools. The report also confirmed that charters in Washington, as elsewhere, enrolled fewer special education students and fewer ELLs.

 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization, Washington State

West Virginia: Governor Refuses to Add Charter Schools to Pay Increases

By dianeravitch
January 31, 2019 //
9

 

 

Republican legislators in West Virginia want to tie pay increases for teachers—which they were promised when they went on strike last year—to the introduction of charter schools and vouchers. They think that school choice will raise test scores, which it won’t.

Governor Justice said he won’t support charter schools. The state can’t afford it. Presumably he won’t support vouchers either, which not only reduce revenues but lower test scores.

Governor Justice comes out against one W.Va. big education bill

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, School Choice, Teachers, West Virginia

Randi on L.A. Charter Moratorium

By dianeravitch
January 30, 2019 //
13

Interesting new details here about charter schools in Los Angeles. Contrary to the claims of their boosters, the great majority of charters have vacancies (82% do, according to board member Scott Schmerelson) and 8 ofthe 10 worst performing schools in L.A. are charter schools.

 

   

AFT President Randi Weingarten on Los Angeles School Board Charter School Moratorium Vote
 

WASHINGTON—The Los Angeles school board voted 5-1 yesterday to place an eight- to 10-month local moratorium on the opening of new charter schools, which would allow for the completion of a state study on the impact charter schools have on traditional schools. The vote comes after members of the United Teachers Los Angeles settled a contract with the Los Angeles Unified School District last week; one of the major issues in negotiations was how the exponential growth of charter schools has drained resources from the city’s public schools.  UTLA is an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers. AFT President Randi Weingarten issued the following statement: 

“In the wake of tax caps, the lack of appropriate investment has been a challenge for public education in Los Angeles for decades. Add to that the unregulated growth of charter schools that siphoned off more funding, and the result was the scarcity that led to the L.A. teachers’ strike. While charters were sold as a response to the demand for better schools, they too have a mixed record. More than 80 percent of charter schools cannot meet their projected enrollment numbers, and 8 of the 10 worst-performing schools in L.A., including one that has already been closed, are charter schools.

So a moratorium is a good idea to bring equity and sustainability back to LAUSD, and with this vote, the school board made good on its promise to help do it. 

“Now, we work to rebalance the city’s school system so every student has access to a well-funded school with normal class sizes, school nurses and counselors, and the same transparency and accountability measures to make sure kids’ needs are being put before anything else.

This resolution allows everyone who cares about education in Los Angeles to take a step back and make sure those needs are being met.” 
Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

Jeff Bryant: L.A. Teachers See Charters as “Existential Threat” to Public Education

By dianeravitch
January 30, 2019 //
13

 

Jeff Bryant went to Los Sngeles to interview teachers during the strike. He discovered that they see charters as privatization, and as such, an existential threat to public education. A few years ago, UTLA commissioned an independent audit of the cost of charters and learned that they drain $600 annually from the district.

https://www.salon.com/2019/01/25/los-angeles-teachers-make-the-case-that-charter-schools-are-an-existential-threat-to-public-education_partner/

Jeff Bryant reports:

 

This article was produced by Our Schools, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
“Isn’t it reasonable to have some regulations on charters?” asked Ingrid King, a kindergarten and dual language teacher at Latona Avenue Elementary School in Los Angeles. She and two of her colleagues spoke to me from the picket lines during the recently resolved teacher strike in her city. When she and over 30,000 teachers and school personnel walked off the job, it closed the nation’s second-largest school system of nearly a half-million students for six days and filled the streets with huge protests.The strike ended when the district conceded to give teachers a 6 percent pay raise, limit class sizes, reduce the number of student assessments by half, and hire full-time nurses for every school, a librarian for every middle and high school, and enough counselors to provide one for every 500 students.But the concessions teachers won that will likely have the most impact outside of LA are related to charter schools. The teachers forced the district leader to present to the school board a resolution calling on the state to cap the number of charter schools, and the teachers made the district give their union increased oversight of charter co-locations — a practice that allows charter operations to take possession of a portion of an existing public school campus.

Los Angeles Unified has 277 charter schools, the largest number of charter schools of any school district in the nation. The schools serve nearly 119,000 students, nearly one in five students. The vast majority of charters are staffed by non-union teachers. (Teachers at a chain of unionized charter schools in the city that joined district teachers on the strike are still on strike.) So the quick takefrom some is the teachers’ union made curbs on charter schools part of their demands because these schools are a threat to the union’s power.

But when you talk to teachers, that’s not what they say. They tell you they want to curb charter school growth, not because it threatens their union, but because charters threaten the very survival of public schools.

Read on!0

 

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

UTLA Statement On LAUSD Votes Today

By dianeravitch
January 29, 2019 //
5

MEDIA ADVISORY
1.29.19
Media Contact:
Anna Bakalis, UTLA Communications Director
(213) 305-9654 (cell)

UTLA statement on LAUSD School Board votes, including approval of a resolution calling for a charter moratorium

Today the LAUSD School Board approved unanimously a historic UTLA contract that prioritizes what students need in their schools. This is a reaffirmation of the effectiveness of our 6-day strike and the overwhelming parent and public support for LA educators. Additionally, in a 5-1 vote, the School Board passed a resolution calling for a state study and an 8- to 10-month moratorium on new charters in the district until the study is complete.

The charter moratorium vote is a groundbreaking moment in the fight for public education in LA, one that is reflective of what UTLA members, parents and our communities have fought so hard for: A sustainable public school district that serves all students.

“LAUSD has joined the NAACP and other key organizations in calling on the state of California for a moratorium on charters,” said UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl. “This is a win for justice, transparency, and common sense. We need to invest in our existing schools, not follow a business model of unregulated growth when new schools are fundamentally not needed in LA.”

The California Charter Schools Association bused students to the meeting, leaving a day of instruction behind to attend. CCSA did so under the false pretense that the board was considering a ban of all charter schools. Teary-eyed students talked during public comment, thinking that their school would be closed if the resolution passed.

Charters have grown exponentially at LAUSD, from 10 in the 2000-01 school year to 277 this year, with the district now the largest charter school authorizer in the nation. The current oversaturation of charter schools means that more than 80 percent of charter schools cannot meet their projected enrollment numbers. This calls into question the charter industry’s assertion that their schools have waiting lists and underscores that there are already more than enough charter schools to meet demand.

Nick Melvoin, who disavows any responsibility over charter school regulation despite being on the school board of the largest charter school authorizer in the country, was the lone vote against the resolution.

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