Archives for category: Privatization
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The Opioid Crisis: Who Should Be Held Accountable?

By dianeravitch
February 7, 2019 //
19

 

Over 200,000 people have died due to opioid addiction. The lead manufacturer of OxyContin is Purdue Pharmaceuticals in Connecticut. The company salespeople assured doctors and nurses that opioids were safe and effective.

Massachusetts Attorney General Maureen Healey is suing the company and members of its board of directors for the damage done by their drug.  The mai owners of Purdue are the Sackler Family, whose net worth exceeds $14 billion.

AG Healey wants to hold them accountable.

One of the main “charities” of Jonathan Sackler is charter schools. He has financed them in Connecticut through his organization called CONNCan. He has also financed 50CAN, which aims to spread charters nationally. He serves on the boards of other charter groups.

Read AG Healey’s devastating account of the family’s and directors’ actions.

https://www.mass.gov/files/documents/2019/01/31/Massachusetts%20AGO%20Amended%20Complaint%202019-01-31.pdf?_ga=2.233141022.1274067287.1549222015-666842443.1549222015

The Sacklers produced and marketed a drug that destroyed many lives. Now they use their fortune to endow museums and destroy public schools.

 

 

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

Bill Phillis: Stop Wasting Money on Charter Schools and Fund Real Public Schools

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2019 //
8
Bill Phillis a a retired deputy superintendent of schools in Ohio. He follows the money and tracks how much corrupt charter operators have diverted from public schools.
Note in the previous article that demand for charter seats has fallen in Ohio.
Bill Phillis writes:
Charter champion Fordham Institute’s spokesman is on a media blitz promoting more money for charter facilities. He is quoted as saying, “They don’t have the money to spend on adequate facilities and end up missing out on things like science labs, and computer centers, and playgrounds, and other things that are incredibly critical and part of the education process.”
The charter sector in Ohio is totally inefficient. In most cases, the charter industry is duplicating facilities that wouldn’t be needed if charter students were attending the traditional system.
The charter industry is notorious for outrageous high cost leasing arrangements that take funds away from charter classrooms. If charters receive more funding for facilities, much of it will be layered on top of the huge profits collected by charter facility companies allied with charter management companies.
Until charters are required to follow the same laws and rules as school districts, not one dime more should be provided to charters for facilities or any other purpose.
Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Pittsburgh: Christian Academy Switches to Charter to Collect Public Money

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2019 //
4

Steven Singer reports that a Christian Academy in Pittsburgh has applied to become a charter school. That would permit the school to collect public money, which is not possible as a religious school.

Under Pennsylvania law, religious schools cannot be funded with public money.

What an idea to declare the school to be a charter school!

Singer writes:

It’s awfully convenient that a school whose mission statement currently includes “We share Christ with our children daily and seek to help them grow into mature Christians” would somehow magically become secular overnight.

 

If Imani’s charter is approved, it would be required to discontinue any religious component in its curriculum. The state school code requires even charter schools to be “nonsectarian in all operations.” The proposed academy would not be permitted to display any religious objects or symbols on the premises.

 

Yet one wonders who will check to make sure this actually happens.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Privatization, Religion

Denis Smith Warns West Virginia: Avoid Charter Schools!

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2019 //
2

 

Teachers across the state of West Virginia walked out last spring. Every school in the state was closed until the teachers got a 5% pay raise and other concessions. Among them, the governor promised to block charter legislation.

Now the Republican dominated legislature is moving forward with legislation for charters, vouchers, and cybercharters. One assumes this is punishment for last year’s actions.

Denis Smith warns the legislators and people of West Virginia that the legislation is an invitation to waste, fraud, abuse, theft, and grifters. 

He writes:

In the last several days, I took some time to examine Senate Bill 451 and its provisions for establishing charter schools in West Virginia. My interest in doing so was based on my previous service as a school administrator in the state, as well as 11 years of experience in Ohio as an administrator for a charter school authorizer and as a consultant in the charter school office of the Ohio Department of Education.

It is this experience in both public education and the charter school environment that allows me to urge West Virginia citizens to do everything possible to halt this odious legislation.

After more than 20 years of growth nationally, it is noteworthy that some of the trend lines for charters are on the decline. This experiment with deregulation has resulted in massive corruption, fraud and diminished learning opportunities for young people.

As a state monitor, I observed a number of incompetent people serve as charter school administrators because Ohio state law has no minimum educational requirements nor any professional licensing prerequisites for school leaders.

In addition, numerous conflicts-of-interest, including a board member serving as landlord and management companies charging exorbitant rents for properties conveniently used for charter schools, are only part of the problem of the charter experiment.

In Ohio, where charters have operated for 20 years, the trend line is down significantly. From a high point of more than 400 schools, 340 are operating today. Moreover, there is a junk pile of failed charters that have closed. The Ohio Department of Education website lists 292 schools that are shuttered, with some closing in mid-year, disrupting the lives of students and their families. Moreover, total charter school enrollment in the state is down by more than 16,000 students since 2013, the peak year of charter operations in the Buckeye State.

The West Virginia omnibus measure allows online schools to operate, as does Ohio and other states. But last year, Ohio’s Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, one of the largest e-schools in the country, closed amid scandal, where the owner and his administrators funneled millions of dollars in donations to friendly state legislators while padding enrollment numbers to gain state education payments.

In my home state of Pennsylvania, there is also a growing scandal involving an online school. The West Virginia Legislature has not heeded these lessons to be learned from its neighboring states that have been in the troubled charter school business for decades.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Ohio, Privatization, School Choice, Virtual Charter Schools, West Virginia

California: Governor Newsom Asks for Independent Review of Fiscal Impact of Charters on Public Schools

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2019 //
13

The strike by the UTLA in Los Angeles just claimed an important victory. As California law now is written, the grant of a charter is not supposed to take into account the fiscal impact of a new charter on the fiscal condition of the district where it is located.

Thanks to the UTLA settlement, Governor Gavin Newsom has directed State Superintendent of Instruction Tony Thurmond to appoint an independent panel of experts to review exactly that: what is the fiscal impact of charters on the public schools of their host district?

The panel will have four months to look at the issue, and to report back to Newsom by July 1. Thurmond has not yet announced who will be on the panel, but its formation raises the likelihood that California’s charter school laws may undergo revision over the coming year.  This would be the first time there has been an in-depth look at the financial impact of charter schools since passage of California’s first charter law in 1992.

The issue was a concern of Newsom’s even before the L.A. teachers  strike, said Newsom spokesperson Brian Ferguson.

“As Governor Newsom stated in his first budget proposal, rising charter school enrollments in some urban districts are having real impacts on those districts’ ability to provide essential support and services for their students,” he said.

Under a 1998 state law, districts are not allowed to take into account the financial impact of a charter school on a district in deciding whether or not to grant them a charter. Charter advocates fear that removing this prohibition could have a dramatic impact on slowing charter school school expansion in the state.

Newsom’s creation of a panel to look into the issue appears a responseto a resolution approved by the Los Angeles Unified school board last month as part of the agreement it reached with the United Teachers of Los Angeles and its striking teachers last month. The resolution called for a “comprehensive study” of various aspects of charter schools in the district, including their “financial implications.”

The resolution also called for an 8-to-10 month moratorium on new charter schools while the study was being conducted.  So far, however, Newsom has been silent on these latest calls for a moratorium.

In a statement, the United Teachers of Los Angeles, representing 33,000 teachers and other staff in the district, “applauded” Newsom for recognizing what it said was obvious:  that L.A. Unified and other districts across the state are being “financially strangled” by what it called the “unmitigated growth” of charter schools.

But it questioned the need for a panel, saying that an “immediate cap on charter schools is urgently necessary.” Large urban districts, it said, were “well past the saturation point for charter school growth.”

Similar calls for a cap or a moratorium are coming from other districts with a large proportion of students in charter schools. In Oakland, where teachers appear to be on the verge of a strike, the school board also has set as one of its priorities convincing lawmakers in Sacramento to impose a moratorium on charter expansion. And in the nearby West Contra Costa Unified District, which includes Richmond, the board will consider a resolution this week calling for a statewide charter moratorium.

This is a tremendous setback for the charter industry, which has taken advantage of the opportunity to expand without regard to the cost of local public schools, even if it sets them on the path to insolvency.

Last May, Gordon Lafer, a political economist at the University of Oregon, produced a report for “In the Public Interest” estimating what charter schools cost three local school districts. When a student leaves for a charter school, the student takes his or her tuition money but the school still has fixed costs (or “stranded costs”) that cannot be cut, like custodians, transportation, maintenance, and utilities. To break even, the district must cut its budget, lay off teachers, increase class sizes, and eliminate programs. Thus, the majority of students suffer deteriorating conditions so that the charter schools may increase enrollment.

It’s long past time to take a look at this issue and establish accountability, transparency, and limits to charter school expansion in California.

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

Los Angeles: A Student Star Is Born

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2019 //
9

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Cory Booker: What Educators and Parents Need to Know

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2019 //
48

 

 

Mitchell Robinson of Michigan State University explains why he could not support for Cory Booker for the Democratic nomination in 2020.

He writes:

I really don’t want to be a single-issue voter, but education will almost always be the most important issue for me–and Booker is catastrophically wrong and bad on education. His corporate leanings and pro-pharma stance are just the gravy for me on Booker.

So, if you like for-profit charters, then Cory Booker is your guy.

If you want to privatize public education, then Cory Booker is your guy.

If you think that state tax dollars should go toward vouchers to pay for private and religious school tuition, then Cory Booker is your guy.

If you think that Betsy DeVos’ education policies are making schools work better for kids, families, and communities, then Cory Booker is your guy.

And if you think that scapegoating the “failing public schools” takes the heat off your candidate’s support of a corrupt Wall St., or the crushing costs of prescription drugs, or our nightmare of a health care system, then Cory Booker is your guy.

But if you think it’s about time for the Democratic Party to return to their historic support of public education, and teachers unions, and abandon their somewhat recent neo-liberal dalliance with charter schools, and school privatization, and the corporate reform of education agenda, then look for a candidate who isn’t a charter member of “Democrats for Education Reform” (spoiler alert: they aren’t Democrats, and they aren’t *for* education), and who doesn’t have more ties to Betsy DeVos than her yachts have non-US flags, and who was willing to work with Chris Christie to sell-out Newark’s schools to Mark Zuckerberg.

None of this this is new.

This article appeared in Education Week in 2013. Nothing has changed. Cory Booker is still a supporter of charters and vouchers, no different from Betsy DeVos except she’s a billionaire and he raises money from Wall Street billionaires.

Things Educators Need to Know About Cory Booker

Education Week By Alyson Klein October 29, 2013

New Jersey voters this month picked Newark Mayor Cory Booker, a Democrat, to fill the U.S. Senate seat formerly held by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, also a Democrat, who died in June. Mr. Booker already has a national profile on education issues.

1. ‘Democrat for Education Reform’: Mr. Booker was a galvanizing force in the past decade bringing together a cadre of high-powered, deep-pocketed Wall Street donors with an interest in education policy, to support his early races for city council and mayor. The group eventually became Democrats for Education Reform, now the signature political action committee for left-of-center politicians who are fans of less-than-traditional Democratic policies, including charter schools and teacher performance pay. The group’s founders “knew each other before, but they got involved in politics together to support Cory Booker,” said Joe Williams, the executive director of dfer. The pac poured some quarter-million dollars into Mr. Booker’s Senate campaign, Mr. Williams estimated.

2. Voucher Supporter: Mr. Booker is among a handful of prominent Democrats nationally to support private school vouchers, and championed a proposed New Jersey law that would have created a voucher program in that state. He co-founded Excellent Education for Everyone, a nonprofit organization that sought to promote vouchers and charter schools in New Jersey. The push won backing from other well-known New Jersey Democrats but was ultimately unsuccessful.

https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/10/30/10electionsenator.h33.html

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

California: Board of West Contra County Schools Debating Charter Moratorium

By dianeravitch
February 5, 2019 //
2

 

Following the passage by the Los Angeles schoolboard of a request for a charter moratorium, other counties in California are taking a look at doing the same.

 

 

Charter Moratorium to go Before School Board

WCCUSD Trustee Consuelo Lara is bringing a resolution supporting a Statewide Moratorium on the Growth of Charter Schools and strengthening oversight and transparency of current charter schools.

The resolution puts the WCCUSD in step with the recent resolution passed by the Los Angeles School Board joining with the NAACP, the Journey for Justice Alliance, Black Lives Matters and many other organizations and governmental bodies which have demanded a stop to the expansion of Charters at the expense of publicly run schools.

The meeting will be Wednesday 2/6

Lovonya DeJean Middle School
Multipurpose Room
3400 Macdonald Avenue

It is expected that the Charter Schools will use their money and buses to turn out in force to oppose this resolution. Supporters of public schools must be heard.

“Co-location” Means Closing Neighborhood Public Schools

For three years, PublicCore has been warning that continued WCCUSD approval of charter schools will lead to the closure of neighborhood schools. Now that chicken is coming home to roost. Unless neighbors and concerned community members rise up and say “NO!” El Sobrante will lose its middle school.

Pinole Middle School has already been forced to share its site with Voices Charter School as part of a practice known as “co-location.” Across the freeway in El Sobrante, Crespi Middle School has been forced to share its facility with Invictus Middle School. According to Prop 39 (aka “the charter school law”), each February, charter schools must make their anticipated facility needs request to the school district in which they are located. WCCUSD superintendent Matt Duffy has announced that both Voices andInvictus will be asking the district for more space in the 2019 – 2020 school year.

One of the options the district is considering is to close Crespi Middle School, move those students to Pinole Middle School, and allow Voices and Invictus to take over the Crespi site.

PublicCore is vehemently opposed to this option, as it gives public school students and their families fewer choices and takes away El Sobrante’s only middle school.

What you can do:
—Read the concerns of Joseph Glatzer, 7th grade history teacher at Pinole Middle School (see below)


—Contact the WCCUSD Board of Education [tom.panas@wccusd.net, stephanie.hernandez-jarvis@wccusd.net, valerie.cuevas@wccusd.net, clara@wccusd.net, mister.phillips@wccusd.net]


—Attend the WCCUSD Board of Education meeting on Feb. 6 at LaVonya DeJean Middle School


—Attend “Closing Crespi: a Town Hall with Trustee Phillips” at 6 pm onMarch 14 at Hilltop Church of Christ, El Sobrante

Letter from Jospeph Glatzer:

I’m Joseph Glatzer, 7th grade history teacher at Pinole Middle School. I’m here to oppose Voices getting any more of our classrooms and deepening their occupation of our campus. My criticism is with the charter system, not individual families.

I noticed in reading Mr. Duffy’s report that it says our enrollment at Pinole Middle is down. It had been down the past few years due to charter encroachment, but because of the amazing job our staff has done, our enrollment is up pretty significantly this year. Is the board aware of that? Parents are fed up with the lack of actual teaching at Summit, and we get kids coming back from them nearly every week.

Also, we know you’re not trying to close Crespi until 2 years from now, but that doesn’t make it any better.

How much smaller could our classrooms be if we weren’t hemorrhaging money to charter schools for their own profit?

Hiding behind the law and saying you have no choice doesn’t make any sense. Voices is not holding board meetings in Contra Costa County. They’re in violation of their charter and it should be revoked. The dangerous driving, traffic and noise is out of control. Our students are being hurt by a de facto private elementary being artificially wedged into their school.

It’s time for the school board to adopt the NAACP resolution for a moratorium on charter schools, which was just endorsed by UTR. Are you going to be on the side of the NAACP or on the side of a deeply segregated de facto private school which is taking our desperately needed public funds?

The argument has been that if you don’t approve these collocations then we’ll get sued and that’ll cost the district a lot of money. But we’re already losing tens of millions of dollars from approving all these charters and co-locations. We’re going to have severe financial challenges, like we see in Oakland, if something doesn’t change. So we might as well unite with other districts and fight for what’s right.

Prop 39 can be challenged as unconstitutional under the California state constitution, because it guarantees children the right to an education, which charters are endangering.

This is a civil rights issue and a human rights issue. We learned from Gandhi and Martin Luther King that respecting unjust laws is an immoral act.

Don’t take away any more of our classrooms at Pinole Middle. Thank you.

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

Is the Charter School Market Over-Saturated? Yes.

By dianeravitch
February 5, 2019 //
16

Remember the stories about the long waiting lists to get into charters?

Baloney.

In Los Angeles, more than 80% of all charter schools have vacancies.

Yet the billionaires are still spending to try to open more charters, in the absence of need or demand.

Please read this article in California-based Capital & Main, which contains a fascinating statistical analysis of charter school saturation.

The evidence suggests, writes Larry Buhl, that charter schools are now stealing students not only from public schools but from other charter schools.

Total student enrollment across the Los Angeles Unified School District has been declining for years, due partly to the high cost of living, which is pushing out families from the city. The latest LAUSD Superintendent Budget showed an overall enrollment decline of approximately 100,000 K-12 students districtwide — at the same time enrollment in charter schools increased dramatically over the past 14 years.

According to the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA), 118,820 students are being served at 249 charter schools throughout LAUSD. The CCSA also reports that there are more than 16,000 students on a wait list for charters authorized by LAUSD, and nearly 20,000 on wait lists for all charters in greater Los Angeles. The waitlist estimates are based on reported counts given by charter leaders; CCSA says that its estimates take into account duplicate students applying to multiple schools.

Unless there are a few standout charters that every student is applying to, those wait list figures are hard to square with district data that show widespread under-enrollment across LAUSD charters.

A November 2018 LAUSD interoffice memorandum on charter school enrollment showed that more than 80 percent of the 224 district-authorized independent charter schools were under-enrolled:

  • The aggregate enrollment projections from the schools anticipated that 128,374 total students would be enrolled. The official Norm Enrollment figures show that the actual number of students for 2017-2018 was 112,492 students (or 15,882 fewer students than the schools projected).
  • Approximately 34 of the 224 schools either met or exceeded their enrollment targets, while the remaining 190 did not. This trend appears consistent with both small and large charter operators.

*   *   *

With more charters chasing fewer students, marketing and outreach have become increasingly crucial to enrollment.

More money for marketing means less money for instruction. This is insane. It is very expensive and wasteful to maintain a dual school system.

Want to know which charter schools failed to meet their enrollment target. Look here.

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

Despite Charter Failure in Michigan, DeVos Awards $47 Million to Her State for More

By dianeravitch
February 5, 2019 //
24

Over the past decade, Michigan has become a national symbol of charter failure. As choice expanded, public school funding declined. Michigan’s NAEP scores fell from the middle of the pack to the bottom 10. Michigan is the only state where 80% of charters operate for profit. Most charters are concentrated inDetroit, which is the lowest performing urban district in The nation.

Betsy DeVos Just awarded $47 million to Michigan to open more charters.

Why does she stay Ina job when she has become a laughing stock? Because Congress gives her more than $400 million to hand out to charters.

 

Help Guide the Launch, Expansion & Replication of Great Charters!


The Michigan Department of Education (MDE) was recently awarded a $47 million Charter Schools Program grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The main goal of the grant is to award subgrants up to $1,250,000 to applicants that are prepared and ready to successfully launch, expand or replicate innovative and effective schools that will provide quality options for underserved populations.

To help accomplish this goal, the MDE has engaged the National Charter Schools Institute to assemble and coordinate a team of experienced and highly skilled professionals to serve on three-person application review teams. 


Each reviewer will be responsible for analyzing up to four applications and calibrating their individual assessment with those of their three-person review team, so a consensus report containing constructive feedback can be provided to each applicant prior to submitting their official grant application to MDE. 

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, For-Profit, Funding, Michigan, Privatization
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