Archives for category: Privatization
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Denver Teachers End Strike; Oakland Teachers Likely to Strike Next

By dianeravitch
February 15, 2019 //
9

 

Denver teachers ended their strike and settled with the district for a substantial pay raise, CNN reports:

“Denver educators have been promised pay raises as part of a tentative deal they reached with their school district after three days on strike.

“Under the tentative agreement between Denver Public Schools and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, educators would see between 7% and 11% increases to their base salaries and a 20-step salary schedule, the union said in a statement Thursday.
“Teachers went on strike to demand higher, stable salaries, because the district uses unpredictable bonuses to compensate for low base pay.
“They also hoped higher salaries would keep more educators from leaving the city, where the cost of living has skyrocketed in recent years, one teacher told CNN.
The agreement would also put an end to “exorbitant five-figure bonuses” for senior administrators, the union’s statement said.
“This agreement is a win, plain and simple: for our students, for our educators, and for our communities,” union President Henry Roman said.”

Meanwhile, Oakland teachers authorized a strike and will do so if necessary.

This historic wave of teacher militancy seems to have a multiplier effect.

Teachers in most states are underpaid and finally have the public support they need as media coverage accurately portrays the national underinvestment in education over the past decade amp longer.

Back to Oakland.

Poor Oakland has been a Petri dish for Reform. State takeovers. Near bankruptcy. A series of Broadie Superintendents who opened multiple charters, stripping the district of resources.

No wonder teachers are talking Strike.

As teachers in Oakland prepare for a possible strike, the district office is trying to hire substitutes (scabs) to replace the teachers, offering double what subs usually earn. The Oakland teachers will have none of it.

https://eastbaymajority.com/oakland-unified-school-district-treats-scabs-better-than-teachers/?fbclid=IwAR1jZyKck5lrmS18PMFrfyfJX8HbqEGlDyVRjC4Uz4SC6njV6clETbg0jUY

Oakland teachers, you have the support of your allies across the nation!

Save public education in Oakland!

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, California, Charter Schools, Denver, Oakland, Privatization, Teachers

Bruce Baker and Mark Weber: The Big Lies About Charter Schools in Newark

By dianeravitch
February 15, 2019 //
13

 

Nowthat Cory Booker is running for the Democratic nomination for president, expect to hear a Big Liesabout the transformation of the Newark’s hoops when Booker was Mayor.

This study by Bruce Baker and Mark Weber of Rutgers University is a useful antidote.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, New Jersey, Newark, Privatization

California: Charter School Threatens to Drive District into Bankruptcy

By dianeravitch
February 15, 2019 //
7

 

A school district in Santa Barbara County may go bankrupt because of the charter chain absorbing revenues from its schools.

https://ksby.com/news/local-news/2019/02/11/syvuhsd-says-charter-school-funding-could-bankrupt-the-district?fbclid=IwAR0V9u7V4jluBv5yN7vbzFuOc905hAhxnS0hJHorW-7tuia6DctW-nbgN20

“One Santa Barbara County school district says keeping a local charter school open could cause them to go bankrupt.

“California’s Department of Education recently decided the Santa Ynez Valley Union High School District has to help fund Olive Grove Charter School, a public school with six different locations.

“Olive Grove Charter Schools have been in Santa Barbara County since 2000, originally chartered by the Los Olivos School District. In 2014, Los Olivos decided it no longer wanted to oversee the schools.

“The only district willing to speak with us was New Cuyama so we did get authorized with the state board and New Cuyama paid us in-lieu funds at that point,” explained Laura Mudge, Executive Director of Olive Grover Charter School.

“Then the laws changed, and they were back at the drawing board.

“So the California Department of Education was hoping everyone would be able to get to an agreement, especially since Olive Grove had been authorized and in the county since 2000. It didn’t go that way, so we went back to the districts, back to the county and back to the state and then got authorized,” Mudge said.

“Now, the Santa Ynez Valley Union High School District is stuck footing the bill – one that’s so high, they say it could lead to bankruptcy.

“We received notification from the Department of Education in December that we’re going to owe $696,000 to help fund Olive Grove Charter. That was just based off the beginning of the year attendance. If you listen to projections coming from the executive director of Olive Grove, that number will be closer to $1-1.2 million come the end of this school year,” said Scott Corey, superintendent of the Santa Ynez Valley Union High School District.”

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

Jan Resseger: Why Denver Teachers Went on Strike

By dianeravitch
February 14, 2019 //
1

 

Jan Resseger cogently summarizes the reasons that Denver teachers went on strike. 

They struck against Corporate Reform.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Jan Resseger: The Challenge of Removing Arne Duncan’s Bad Policies from State Laws

By dianeravitch
February 14, 2019 //
17

 

Jan Resseger explains the power of conventional wisdom, which persists even when its effects are harmful and its premises disproven.

She sees Race to the Top as the quintessential bad idea locked in place in almost every state.

How to restore good sense and expunge bad policies?

She shows how her own state of Ohio has been severely damaged by Duncan’s policies.

The Difficulty of Cleaning Arne Duncan’s Awful Policies Out of the Laws of 50 States

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

Los Angeles: Will LAUSD Close Down Failing Charter Schools?

By dianeravitch
February 13, 2019 //
8

Carl J. Petersen wonders if the LAUSD school board will hold failing charter schools accountable?

Predictably, it turns out that the charterization of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) did not provide the miracle that was promised. The District has the highest number of charter schools in the country, with approximately 18% of its students in these publicly funded private schools. In the just-released list of 110 underperforming schools in the LAUSD, 20%were independent charter schools. Are we diverting $591.7 million from our public schools to get basically the same results?….

The list of underperforming charters includes schools run by large, influential charter chains like PUC, Kipp, Green Dot, and Camino Nuevo (whose chief of operations, Allison Greenwood Bajracharya, is running in the District 5 special election). This will make any attempt to hold these schools accountable extremely difficult. Will the Board put “Kids First” and face this opposition head on?

 

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

Camden, NJ: No Miracle There!

By dianeravitch
February 13, 2019 //
9

 

A few months ago, the New York Times published a very credulous article about the “successful” state takeover of Camden, New Jersey. This was surprising because the superintendent who took charge had never run a school or a district before.  Age 32, he had worked for Joel Klein.

Jersey Jazzman was doubtful. There has never been a successful state takeover.

So he waited until  the state audit was completed. And his doubts were confirmed.

Here is JJ’s post about Camden:

http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-failure-of-state-control-in-camden.html

The so-called Renaissance schools in Camden were supposed to take all neighborhood kids. They don’t.

He writes:

“Before we dive into this, let’s step back and recall some history:
“Way back in 2012 — back when Chris Christie was making teacher bashing fashionable — a couple of low-level bureaucrats in the NJ Department of Education came up with a plan for Camden’s Schools. The idea was to take power away from the local school board — which didn’t have much power anyway as it had been subject to the direction of a state fiscal monitor since 2006 — and shift control to the Christie administration and the State Board of Education. This would allow charter schools to flourish while CCPS schools were shuttered.
“It’s worth noting that the guys who came up with the plan were paid by California billionaire Eli Broad, who was the patron of then-Acting Commissioner of Education Chris Cerf. The next year, Christie went all-in on Camden and had the state take overt the district. The excuse was that Camden was such a failure, the state really had no choice.
“Christie proceeded to go out and get a very young fellow to be his new superintendent. Paymon Rouhanifard had, at best, six years of total experiencein education, but apparently that’s all he needed to take on arguably the toughest school leadership job in the state.
Rouhanifard left CCPS last year; when the Auditor discusses the state of Camden’s schools, he’s discussing Rouhanifard’s legacy. I’ve already gone over the issues with the Renaissance schools’ enrollments; let’s look at what else the Auditor found in Camden.”
What else did the audit find?
Experienced administrators fired and replaced by incompetent managers. Lost or misspent millions. Lack of financial controls.
Jersey Jazzman concludes:
“The idea that state control is the only solution for “failing” urban schools is built on a nasty bedrock of racism. But on top of that: State control of schools clearly doesn’t work.
“I know credulous reporters love to eat up pre-digested talking points about soaring graduation rates and skyrocketing test scores to justify these state interventions. But when you look at these metrics properly, it turns out the grad rates are simply part of overall trends (more here), and the small bumps in test scores are best understood as artifacts from changing the tests, not as real improvements in teaching and learning.
“Camden deserves better. It needs experienced, competent leadership that can properly manage the district’s finances. It needs adequate and equitable funding. It needs a system of school governance that allows all local stakeholders to have a say in how the system is operated — just like almost every other district in the state.
“State control has failed in Camden. It’s time to admit it and move on to something better.”

This is the Times’ article:

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, New Jersey, Privatization

Steven Singer: Rahm Emanuel Did Not Apologize for the Damage He Did as a Reformer

By dianeravitch
February 12, 2019 //
6

Steven Singer nails Rahm Emanuel’s false apology. Rahm claims he is no longer a Reformer yet continues to think he has to get tough on somebody to produce the test scores he wants. When I visited the Washington Post recently, I heard Rahm discuss his great education successes in Chicago, in conversation with the woman he appointed as superintendent of schools (talk about softball exchanges!). Not a word was said about his historic and vicious decision to close 50 public schools in one  day, all of them located in communities of color. The gossip was that he was trying out for the next Secretary of Education role. His name will live in education history and it will remind us of his terrible actions as a privatizer, a hater of public schools, and a man who holds teachers in contempt.

 

 

Rahm Emanuel’s recent op-ed in The Atlantic may be one of the dumbest things I have ever read.

 

The title “I Used to Preach the Gospel of Education Reform. Then I Became the Mayor” seems to imply Emanuel has finally seen the light.

 

The outgoing Chicago Mayor USED TO subscribe to the radical right view that public schools should be privatized, student success should be defined almost entirely by standardized testing, teachers should be stripped of union protections and autonomy and poor black and brown people have no right to elect their own school directors.

 

But far from divorcing any of this Reagan-Bush-Trump-Clinton-Obama crap, he renews his vows to it.

 

This isn’t an apologia. It’s rebranding.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Emanuel, Rahm, Privatization, Testing

Valerie Strauss: The Pushback Against Charters Is Getting Stronger

By dianeravitch
February 12, 2019 //
22

 

Valerie Strauss notes on her blog “The Answer Sheet” that charters are losing their luster. With the ascent of Choice Champion Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, Democrats are losing interest in charters. 

Almost 90% are non-union, and Democrats are not as keen about charters as they were when Obama was president. DeVos has made clear that her goal is privatization, and charter schools advance her goal. Today, Democrats running for office are backing away from charters.

The number of charters is not growing as it once did.

Most embarrassing are the escalating charter scandals. The public has begun to realize the absurdity of giving out public money without oversight or accountability.

There is most definitely a backlash. The NAACP call for a moratorium was part of the backlash. So was the referendum in Massachusetts in 2016, where voters overwhelmingly rejected an effort to lift the cap on charters.

Part of the backlash stems from the realization that more money for charters means less money for public schools. Another part is the public revulsion against the billionaires behind the charter movement, whether its DeVos or Bill Gates or the Waltons or the Koch brothers.

No matter what lies are spread, most Americans don’t want to abandon their community public schools to entrepreneurs and corporations.

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

Virginia: #Red4Ed Fights a Valiant Uphill Battle

By dianeravitch
February 11, 2019 //
16

 

 

While the state of Virginia is engulfed in a crisis of leadership, friends of public education are pushing to launch  a statewide protest on behalf of public education, reports Rachel Levy. 

After years of underfunding, grassroots activists have begun their campaign, hoping to ignite a movement that leads to equitable movement. The leadership crisis makes the battle for #Red4Ed even harder in what issuer to be an uphill battle.

Levy writes:

“The #Red4Ed movement has kicked off in Virginia: On January 28, as many as 5,000 public school teachers, educators, workers, parents, students, and other stakeholders marched on the Virginia state capitol in Richmond to demand fully funded public schools. The march and rally, organized by Virginia Educators United, a “grassroots campaign” of teachers, staff members, parents and community members, was one of the largest to descend on the state capitol in the last century.

“The well-organized event was supported by strategic use of social media and a user-friendly website. The group’s demands include restoring funding for education to pre-2008 recession levels, increasing teacher pay to national averages, paying education support professionals competitive wages, recruitment and retention of highly qualified teachers and more teachers of color, more funding for school infrastructure costs, and ensuring sufficient numbers of support staff like counselors and social workers….

“There is broad, bipartisan support for public education in Virginia, despite terrible funding. This support is not a sign that Virginia as a whole is getting “bluer.” In fact, support for school privatization is stronger in places like Richmond with more socially liberal but gentrifying, market-friendly forces. The problem is also that in more conservative, traditionally Republican-voting areas, while support for the institution of public education is strong, support for the policies that will make public schools more equitable, integrated, and better funded is not. And in more conservative areas, there is an inherent discomfort with advocacy and activism—I know from my own research that most people seem to understand advocacy to mean being supportive and uncritical of decision-makers.

“At the rally on January 28, David Jeck, superintendent of Fauquier County public schools, stated that, “the localities are not at fault here.” But such a statement lets wealthier communities off the hook. Local districts in Virginia have also made cuts to education, and did not restore pre-recession funding. And local districts in Virginia are hindered by restrictive proffer policies that make it difficult to collect revenues from developers or otherwise leverage sufficient taxes on businesses and non-personal property. Better-heeled parents support their local public schools not by advocating for more funding, but by funneling donations and in-kind donations directly to their school via parent groups and local businesses and foundations.

”At the state level, the structure of the General Assembly itself poses obstacles. Virginia has a part-time “citizen” legislature. And even though in 2017 a record number of women, people of color, and progressives were elected to the House of Delegates, the capacity of citizens, such as those connected with Virginia Educators United, to engage in advocacy is limited. Participants must be available at any time, including during weekends, holidays, early mornings, and late nights when the General Assembly is in session (for forty-five days and ninety days, alternatively). This means that most such advocacy efforts are left to professional lobbyists, organizations, and associations.”

It will take widespread support to get the attention of the legislature to the state’s crisis of funding.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Funding, Privatization, Resistance, Virginia
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