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Beware the Elites Who Want to Change the World.

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2018 //
30

This is an unusually good opinion piece that appeared in the New York Times a few days ago.

Think Gates, Zuckerberg, Walton, Hastings, Koch, and many more who use their wealth to impose their ideas on what they consider lesser lives.

The author is Anand Giridharadas.

Please note the mention of charter schools, a bone used by the elites to distract us from wealth inequality and the necessity of providing a better education for all.

It begins:

“Change the world” has long been the cry of the oppressed. But in recent years world-changing has been co-opted by the rich and the powerful.

“Change the world. Improve lives. Invent something new,” McKinsey & Company’s recruiting materials say. “Sit back, relax, and change the world,” tweets the World Economic Forum, host of the Davos conference. “Let’s raise the capital that builds the things that change the world,” a Morgan Stanley ad says. Walmart, recruiting a software engineer, seeks an “eagerness to change the world.” Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook says, “The best thing to do now, if you want to change the world, is to start a company.”

“At first, you think: Rich people making a difference — so generous! Until you consider that America might not be in the fix it’s in had we not fallen for the kind of change these winners have been selling: fake change.

“Fake change isn’t evil; it’s milquetoast. It is change the powerful can tolerate. It’s the shoes or socks or tote bag you bought which promised to change the world. It’s that one awesome charter school — not equally funded public schools for all. It is Lean In Circles to empower women — not universal preschool. It is impact investing — not the closing of the carried-interest loophole.

“Of course, world-changing initiatives funded by the winners of market capitalism do heal the sick, enrich the poor and save lives. But even as they give back, American elites generally seek to maintain the system that causes many of the problems they try to fix — and their helpfulness is part of how they pull it off. Thus their do-gooding is an accomplice to greater, if more invisible, harm.

“What their “change” leaves undisturbed is our winners-take-all economy, which siphons the gains from progress upward. The average pretax income of America’s top 1 percent has more than tripled since 1980, and that of the top 0.001 percent has risen more than sevenfold, even as the average income of the bottom half of Americans stagnated around $16,000, adjusted for inflation, according to a paper by the economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman.

“American elites are monopolizing progress, and monopolies can be broken. Aggressive policies to protect workers, redistribute income, and make education and health affordable would bring real change. But such measures could also prove expensive for the winners. Which gives them a strong interest in convincing the public that they can help out within the system that so benefits the winners.”

There is more, if it is not behind a paywall.

Categories Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Disruption, Equity, Fake, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Hypocrisy, Inequality, Koch Brothers, Philanthropy, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Leonie Haimson: Watch Out, Oakland, the Gates Foundation is Coming for Your Public Schools!

By dianeravitch
August 27, 2018 //
5

Leonie Haimson has a warning for the parents and educators of Oakland:

Watch out Oakland! The Gates Foundation gave the City Fund $10 M to privatize what’s left of your public schools https://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Grants-Database/Grants/2018/07/OPP1191868

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Oakland, Privatization

Maryland: The Network for Public Education Action Fund Endorses Ben Jealous, Democratic Candidate for Governor

By dianeravitch
August 26, 2018 //
4

Politico reported that Ben Jealous, who won the Democratic primary for governor in Maryland, is no fan of charter schools. His opponent, Republican Governor Larry Hogan, appointed zealous charter advocates to the state board of education.

The Network for Public Education Action Fund has reviewed Ben Jealous’s outstanding record and endorses him for Governor of Maryland.

The good news is that privatization has entered into the realm of public awareness. That’s the first step in stopping it.

PUBLIC SCHOOL ADVOCATE VIES FOR MARYLAND GOVERNOR: Former Vice President Joe Biden and Maryland’s biggest Democratic Party names are throwing their support behind gubernatorial candidate Ben Jealous, who won a contested primary late last month and will face incumbent Republican Gov. Larry Hogan this fall. Jealous recently told Morning Education that his family has long been involved in the “battle for educational equity.” His mother, Ann, at age 12, successfully sued a local high school in an effort to desegregate it and was part of the first class of black girls to graduate. She later became an activist and a teacher in Baltimore.

— Jealous has the backing of the state teachers union and his education platform is an easy one for traditional public school advocates to get behind. The former NAACP president wants to fund universal preschool by legalizing and taxing marijuana use and to boost teacher pay through lottery and casino funding. He also wants to tackle poverty in education through “community schools,” which would provide a host of services like “counseling, job training, meals, mentoring programs and health clinics,” according to his plan.

— Jealous’ plan doesn’t mention charter schools, which he told Morning Education have been “labs of innovation” in Maryland. But he said Hogan is “out of step with the people of Maryland in wanting to expand public charter schools.”

— While Jealous led the NAACP, the organization joined the New York City teachers union in a lawsuit against the city’s Department of Education to halt school closures and prevent charter schools from sharing buildings with public ones. In a 2011 op-ed for HuffPost, Jealous wrote that traditional public school students are being “forced into shorter playground periods than their charter school counterparts, or served lunch at 10 a.m. so that charter students can eat at noon. The inequity could not be more glaring.”

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

Domingo Morel: The Racism Behind State Takeovers

By dianeravitch
August 26, 2018 //
9

Ever notice how many times Reformers push for a state takeover of majority black and brown districts? Ever notice that the state takeover is the prelude to privatizing the public schools, on the presumption that people of color can’t be trusted to run the schools in their district? Better bring in the smart white entrepreneurs who run charter chains and think they know what kind of discipline children of color need.

Domingo Morel, a political scientist at Rutgers University, has written a book about Takeovers and examined the racial dynamics behind them.

The article and interview are by Chalkbeat’s Matt Barnum.

“In a new book, “Takeover,” Rutgers political scientist Domingo Morel concludes that the prevailing logic for takeovers is indeed tainted with racism. That’s based on an examination of data from every school district taken over by a state over a 30-plus year period, and case studies of the takeovers of Newark, New Jersey and Central Falls, Rhode Island.

“Predominantly black school districts are more likely to be taken over, Morel documents, and those takeovers are more likely to fully remove the elected school board. He also finds that cities with a greater share of black city council members are more likely to face takeovers, with state leaders arguing they must wrest control of chaotic local politics.”

A chart from Morel’s work shows that in the rare event that a majority white district is taken over by the state, 70% keep their elected school board.

In a majority Latin district, 46% keep their elected board.

But when a majority black district is taken over, only 24% retain their elected school board.

I think people don’t pay enough attention to how political education is — that education in the country is a political project. I think that’s the most important thing that I think we need to understand. And so if education is a political project, when we think about reforms, we need to think about them as political objectives as well. And so if we’re going to take over a school district, it just doesn’t seem consistent with what the literature says about improving schools that you just remove a community from the entire decision-making process. Because what the literature tells us in education is — and it’s just very intuitive — if you look at school districts across the country who are doing well, everybody has a stake in the school district.

Source: Takeover, by Domingo Morel. Graphic: Sam Park
But then we get still the expansion of takeovers. It suggests that there’s something else there. And this is where I come in and say that we need to understand historically role that education has played in communities and what type of power it gives a community.

If we look at education as a political problem and we see how important the schools are to communities’ political empowerment, then we can start to see how how takeovers make sense for two major reasons: Conservatives had consolidated within the Republican Party by the 1970s and blacks became an important part of the Democratic coalition by the 1970s. Moreover, the schools served as the political foundation for black political empowerment. This provided the context for increasing political tension between increasingly conservative state governments and cities. The schools were a major part of this political struggle.

Second, cities began to win court cases to secure more school funding from state governments, which led to further tensions.

[Barnum asks]: Reed Hastings, the Netflix founder, charter school advocate, and education reform funder, has said that “the school board model works reasonably well in suburban districts” but that the politically ambitious “use the school board as a stepping stone to run for higher office” in cities. And I take your argument to be, yes it’s true that the school board can be a stepping stone, but that has proven crucial for the political empowerment of communities of color. Can you speak to that?

“Let’s think about that comment and put it in perspective. So what he’s saying is democracy works for certain communities but it can’t work for others. Yes, you have ambitious people, but you also have people who are just interested being school board members. But even if you have ambitious people who want to be city council people, mayors, and so forth, why is that a justification for saying that school boards are not important?

“And so the message that sends is that democracy is worth fighting for and worth having in certain places and not in others because it may seem like it’s more messy in big cities and urban areas. And I say it “may seem” like that because I don’t think there’s any evidence that you find more corruption or people are not as prepared to be school board members in urban localities compared to suburban or rural — there’s just no research to support that…”

[Barnum asks:] Let’s talk about the research on academic gains from state takeovers. I know that’s not the focus of your book, but advocates for state takeovers could point to studies of New Orleans and in Newark, after three years, to say look, it has been successful in boosting test scores in some contexts.

“My response to this is multi-level. The first is that it’s contested to what degree these academic scores actually improved. But I spend very little time on this because as a political scientist, I’m interested in the politics of this mostly. What I will say is, OK, so let’s just agree that test scores have improved. What has been the cost of test scores’ improvement in New Orleans for example?

“In New Orleans, 25 percent of the black teachers lose their jobs. Seven thousand people lose their jobs. The school board was removed from the political process. The school governance was based on a two-tier level: one is the state-created board made up of people that are not from New Orleans and the second is actual charter school governing bodies, 60 percent of which have white members although 67 percent of the community is African-American. And so all of that is the price that the city of New Orleans — that black New Orleans — has to pay for contested improved test scores.”

This is an important article and book.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, New Jersey, New Orleans, Privatization, Racism

Los Angeles: Charter School Closes Due to Low Enrollment (Forget about “Long Waiting Lists”)

By dianeravitch
August 25, 2018 //
17

Howard Blume reports in the Los Angeles Times that a charter school in the chain founded by convicted felon Ref Rodriguez closed due to low enrollment. It had projected a student body of 275 but only 114 signed up.

“On the fourth day of its second school year, an Eagle Rock charter school closed its doors this week, leaving parents and students disappointed, angry and tearful — and bucking the usual narrative of ceaseless charter growth.

“PUC iPrep Charter Academy had dual-language programs in English and either Spanish or Mandarin — the sort of offerings that are usually popular. But it was in an area with too many good school options, and it enrolled too few students.

“It may or may not have been a factor that the school was part of Partnerships to Uplift Communities, the group of charter schools co-founded by Ref Rodriguez, who resigned from the Los Angeles Board of Education in July after pleading guilty to criminal charges related to his campaign for office.
The school aimed to enroll 275 students this year, although the organization told parents it would try to make things work with 200. But by Wednesday, it had only 114 students — and PUC’s board voted to shut it down.”

Charter advocates like to claim that tens of thousands of students are on charter waiting lists, but those lists are never audited, and in the rare instances when anyone checks (it happened in Boston), the waiting list contained names of students who had applied to multiple charters and had long ago been enrolled elsewhere.

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

City Fund: Another Billionaire-Funded Phony Scheme to Steal Public Schools from the Public

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2018 //
26

You first read about “City Fund” when Tom Ultican wrote about it on August 18. Then four days later, Chalkbeat got the “leaked memo” and told the story that Tom had already broken.

Two billionaires, unhappy with the slow and slowing pace of privatization, have created another organization to spread the gospel of school choice, following in the venerable tradition established by racist Southern governors and senators following the Brown Decision of 1954. In the late 1950s (as Mercedes Schneider wrote in detail in her fine book School Choice), white southerners were mad for choice. They saw choice as the best way to stop racial integration.

Now, under the unesteemed leadership of rightwing zealot Betsy DeVos, the mask of benevolence has been stripped away from the choice movement.

But that doesn’t stop billionaires Reed Hastings (Netflix) and John Arnold (Enron). Education is their game, their hobby, and they are not ready to abandon their dream of privatizing every school in America.

They have hired a “dream team” of failed Reformers, who bring together in one place a long history of stealing democracy and public schools from poor African Americans.

The Reformers tell us that up until now, nothing in reform has worked. But they seem convinced that charter schools work (think Detroit, think Milwaukee). If NOLA is the model, start by closing all the public schools, firing all the teachers, then replacing them with charters and TFA. Crucial to the plan is to add hundreds of millions of dollars in new spending (they forgot that part of the formula).

Peter Greene takes a crack at explaining the grand plan for transforming public schools into a business–and failing as Kevin Huffman and Chris Barbic did in Tennessee’s Achievement School District, where they blew $100 million trying to turn “failing schools” into high-performing schools by handing them over to private operators. Say this for Huffman and Barbic: It was failure on a grand scale!

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Failure, Privatization, Tennessee

California: Charter School Borrows Nearly $30 Million for New Building, Then Was Closed Down

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2018 //
6

A charter school in Palmdale, California, raised nearly $30 million in bonds for its new building. But as matters stand, the school will never open. Charters are risky. They open, they close. Sometimes states close more charter schools than they open. That’s business. Where is Enron, Braniff Airlines, all sorts of brands that disappeared? Gone without a trace.


For the last year, construction on the corner of Avenue R and 40th Street East in Palmdale hummed along as a massive school campus took shape.

On its Facebook page, Guidance Charter School posted photos of students holding shovels adorned with yellow ribbons and contractors pouring the foundation for what would be an 87,000-square-foot campus with a swimming pool, library and playing fields — paid for with nearly $30 million in bonds.

Less visible was what was happening behind the scenes, as the local school system raised alarms that threatened Guidance’s existence.

The Palmdale School District’s board of trustees, which first authorized Guidance 17 years ago, voted in January to close the school, citing concerns about poor academic performance and questionable financial operations. As the new campus rose, charter officials launched a series of appeals, the latest of which came before the Los Angeles County Board of Education this week.

On Tuesday, the board rejected Guidance’s last-ditch effort to open for the 2018-19 school year. Unless a court overturns Palmdale’s decision, Guidance Charter School will not be able to enroll students — or receive the state funding that comes with them. But it still will be responsible for repaying the loan.

Supporters say the school is a victim of a process that puts decision-making power in the hands of the very districts that compete with charters for students and funding. Opponents see it as proof that charter schools, regardless of the quality of the education they offer or the extent of oversight they receive, are able to access bond money too easily.

The school’s executive director, Kamal Al-Khatib, blames its closure on the Palmdale School District, which he said purposely set the charter school up for failure in order to win students back. In the spring of 2017, less than a year before voting not to renew the school, the district had declared that Guidance was on solid ground, he said…

Guidance was founded in 2001 by Muslim leaders who promised to offer students a secular education and Arabic instruction.

The school leased space from a mosque owned by the American Islamic Institute of Antelope Valley, a religious organization run by the charter’s founder and its executive director, which would later prompt a host of conflict-of-interest concerns. Guidance’s ties to the mosque — and the thin partitions erected to separate its students from a prayer room — drew criticism from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Anti-Defamation League that there was not enough of a wall between church and state.

Regardless, the school grew. It had opened with 65 students but by last year had about 900 in grades K-12. And every five years, when its right to operate came up for renewal, the Palmdale school board voted to keep it open. Guidance also rented classroom space from the district…

When district officials voted not to renew the charter, they cited Guidance’s lagging academic performance as their primary concern.

Although its students’ scores on the state English exam in 2017 were roughly comparable to their peers in the district, according to Palmdale, math was a different story. In that subject, scores at Guidance were worse than those at most other schools in the area; none of the charter school’s 11th graders tested at grade level.

Many of Guidance’s students didn’t graduate, according to county officials, who said its drop-out rate was about 23% for the class of 2016. Palmdale officials found that even when students did graduate, many were not prepared to go to four-year colleges. According to the district, of 32 students who graduated from Guidance in 2014 and 2015, 24 had not completed the courses required for admission to the University of California or California State University systems.

The district also flagged Guidance’s fiscal operations and governance structure. It accused Al-Khatib of having financial interests in several of the school’s transactions, including its lease with the American Islamic Institute and a roughly $2-million loan from a related company called Guidance Charter School Services LLC.

Guidance’s lawyers disputed the claims and said Al-Khatib’s role at the mosque was voluntary and unpaid.

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

Ohio: Four Radioactive Politicians Who Helped ECOT Milk $1 Billion from Taxpayers

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2018 //
7

Denis Smith writes here about four elected officials, now standing for re-election, who stood by and watched (or helped) the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) as it drained money from the state’s public schools and its taxpayers. $1 billion since 2000!

If you vote in Ohio, watch out for these four:

As damaging as the charter school’s implosion was on the viability of Republican pols, the corresponding explosion ECOT’s demise is causing in state political circles continues to reverberate, particularly for four GOP ECOT stalwarts named Dave Yost, Mike DeWine, Keith Faber and Andrew Brenner.

They are not your friends. They are not friends of public education. They are not stewards of the public trust and treasury.

Rep. Keith Faber is the first case in point. [When the subject is term-limits and running yet again for some other office, you might want to get a scorecard to follow the runs, hits, and mostly errors of this Republican team.] The former Senate president and now House member is currently running for Auditor, seeking to replace current Auditor Dave Yost, who is, you guessed it, term-limited and running for Attorney General.

Faber’s way to brush off the radioactive fallout is to distribute more than $36,000 collected from ECOT to “high quality” charter schools.

Based upon past history, that’s an oxymoron, isn’t it?

Then comes Mike DeWine, a candidate for governor:

Then there’s the curious case of Mike DeWine. The term-limited Attorney General, who is now running for Governor, has decided to go after ECOT founder William Lager, his companies, and several others in high ECOT circles, including its former superintendent, treasurer, and accounting administrator.

Voodoo economics begets voodoo public policy begets voodoo charter schools begets voodoo accounting.

In DeWine’s case, his lawsuit seeks to recover from the ECOT hierarchy a portion of the $62 million ECOT is accused of over-billing the state in voodoo student attendance data.

Worst of all is Andrew Brenner, who called public schools “socialism.”

The third usual GOP suspect is House Education Committee Chair Andrew Brenner who is, you guessed it, term-limited and running for the Senate. Brenner has apparently learned the use of pejoratives from his idol, Donald Trump, the undisputed king for crafting pejoratives as a tactic to demean opponents.

Louise Valentine, Brenner’s Democratic challenger for the Senate seat asked in May if Brenner was considering returning the ECOT donations he’s received over the years. In his usual attack mode characterized by splitting hairs and deflecting the subject, Brenner said he never received any money directly from the school.

No, of course, Brenner didn’t get any money from ECOT. He got money from ECOT’s owner, William Lager!

His opponent calls him #ECOTAndy.

Last is the Auditor who claims to have brought ECOT to justice!

The final figure of the fast and furious foursome is Auditor Dave Yost who, like his colleagues memorialized here, served ECOT well as a commencement speaker, endorser, and proponent of the corrupt online charter school. In addition to scooping up more than $29,000 in campaign cash from ECOT, Yost is remembered for bestowing not just one but three awards for the school’s financial reporting.

According to a 2016 press release on the Auditor’s website, “The school’s excellent record keeping has qualified it for the Auditor of State Award with Distinction.”

There is something Orwellian in the fact that a public official offers praise for an entity which does not operate in the public interest, convenience, and necessity. Such an award demonstrates once again that voodoo economics begets voodoo public policy begets voodoo charter schools which begets voodoo accounting. Which begets an Auditor’s Award for Voodoo Accounting. With Distinction, no less.

Wow. You can’t make that one up.

Vote. Sweep out the scoundrels who stood by and applauded the raid on the state’s treasury.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Fraud, Ohio, Privatization

Bill Phillis: Those Poor, Poor, and Very Few Bad For-Profit Charters in Ohio

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2018 //
5

Bill Phillis, retired for many years as deputy state superintendent of education in Ohio and now the state’s most outspoken critic of charter fraud, writes on his blog about the Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s lame defense of for-profit charters:

“The myth of Ohio’s ‘for-profit’ charter school system”: A Fordham Institute’s damage control effort

An August 20 Fordham article suggests the charter industry is getting a bad rap because of the cronyism of a few charter operators. The article also attempts to justify the use of for-profit management companies by charter schools.

The notion proffered is that ECOT and the White Hat Management Company are the only bad actors in the charter industry. What about the 250 or so charter schools that took state and federal money and closed or never opened leaving kids in an education lurch? What about the other charter operations that have been reported as fostering gross irregularities, such as the Gulen charters, but not appropriately investigated by state officials? What about the Imagine Schools Inc. charter school chain that requires the charter schools to pay absurdly high rent to a real estate company allied with Imagine?

Corruption in the charter industry in Ohio and elsewhere is not confined to just a few bad actors. The industry is rife with low performance, cronyism and corruption.

In the article, the author equates a charter board hiring a management company to operate its school to a school district purchasing buses, books, etc. from the private sector. An absurd stretch!

A management company that operates charter schools performs a governmental fiduciary function and thus should be subjected to the same accountability and transparency measures as school district officials. Bus and book companies don’t operate the schools to which they sell products.

The Ohio charter industry seems beyond repair but Fordham keeps defending it.

Be it noted that the NAACP report on charter schools not only called for a moratorium on them, but called for the elimination of all for-profit charters and the for-profit management organizations that manage charters.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Ohio, Privatization

Arizona: CEO of Failing Online Charter School Gets a Bonus of $8.8 Million

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2018 //
19

Arizona is an amazing state. Taxpayers don’t care how their money is spent. You could collect it and burn it and they wouldn’t care.

That’s the impression you would get if you read this story about Primavera Charter School.

The online high school is a failure but the CEO is getting a bonus of $8.8 million.

“By most academic measures, Primavera online charter school is a failure.”

“Its student-to-teacher ratio is 215-to-1 — 12 times the state average — allowing little or no individualized attention.

“On recently released state standardized tests, less than a quarter of its students passed math and about a third passed English, both below the state average.

“And 49 percent of Primavera students end up dropping out, 10 times the state average.

“But by another measure, Primavera is an unmitigated success: making money.

“Beginning in 2012, the school began shifting large shares of its annual $30-plus million allotment of state funding away from instruction and into stocks, bonds, mortgage-backed securities and real estate.

“That year, 70 percent, or $22.4 million, of its state funding went into its growing investment portfolio — instead of efforts to raise test scores, reduce class sizes, or address an exploding dropout rate that is now the state’s third-highest.”

That’s in line with the usual formula for online charter schools. They fail but they are profitable. State legislatures authorize them despite their consistent record of failure. Usually they do so because a key politician or two received a campaign contribution of a few thousand dollars. Think ECOT in Ohio, which paid off important pols to the tune of a million a year, assuring a return of hundreds of millions every year.

Do taxpayers care? It’s their money.

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Failure, For-Profit, Privatization, Virtual Charter Schools
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