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ECOT Stuff Up for Auction, Right Now: Who Will Get Proceeds? The State or the Charter Owner?

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2018 //
9

Bill Phillis of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy is a steadfast critic of charter schools, which, he says, have absorbed $10 billion in funds that should have gone to Ohio public schools. Now that ECOT is in bankruptcy, the state is trying to claw a few million of the $1 billion that ECOT collected since 2000, when it was founded.

Phillis writes:

Auctions of charter school stuff-another manifestation of tax dollars squandered

The ECOT auction is just another going-out-of-business sale in the charter industry. About 250 charters have closed in Ohio and many have had auctions. These kinds of sales recover only pennies on the dollar.

The ECOT exposure has helped shed light on the waste, fraud and corruption in the industry. Previous charter closures and auctions usually had gone unnoticed by the general public.

Ohioans should assume that the ECOT auction ends the charter fiasco.

Of course, the charter fiasco will go on in Ohio even after ECOT is dead and buried and its stuff auctioned off.

The auction is today. You are not to late to pick something up if you bid online. Maybe a pencil engraved ECOT as a memento of a Teapot Dome type scandal in Ohio, a tribute to privatization and corporate reform. DeVos wants more of the same. Hold on to your wallet.

Goodbye ECOT: School auction begins today; key computers not included
Updated May 11, 2018

By Jeremy P. Kelley, Staff Writer Dayton Daily News

The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) is auctioning its corporate headquarters building and most furnishings and business equipment beginning at 4 p.m. today, according to a news release from the auction firm Gryphon USA.

The auction includes everything from flat-screen TVs, tools and furniture to first-aid kits and pencils, according to Richard Kruse, president of Gryphon Auction Group and court-appointed deputy interim master for ECOT.

Kruse said the computer servers used by the school are not included in the auction. Auditors and prosecutors have suggested there could be evidence of criminal activity by ECOT on those servers.

“The media and government attention has been focused on the servers used by the school, but those are not included in the auction,” Kruse said in the news release. “Due to this, the auction is proceeding on schedule.”

ECOT was Ohio’s largest online school, at one point claiming more than 15,000 students, but the Ohio Department of Education said an enrollment review showed the school was not counting student participation correctly. The state began clawing back millions in funding that ODE said the school should not have received, eventually leading ECOT to close in January.

More than 2,000 students from southwest Ohio were listed as enrolled at ECOT in 2016-17, including 627 who lived in the Dayton school district, 168 in Hamilton, 94 in Springfield and dozens from suburbs ranging from Kettering to Troy.

ECOT’s headquarters building, a 138,000-square-foot facility originally built as Southland Mall, sits on 26.5 acres in south Columbus, near the intersection of U.S. 23 and Interstate 270.

The auction is viewable to the public online at http://www.ecotcre.com for the real estate, and http://www.ecotauction.com for the rest of the items. The online auction is open for bidding until June 12.

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

California: DeVos’ Allies Supporting Villaraigosa for Governor

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2018 //
35

A close ally of Betsy DeVos just made a $2 million contribution to the campaign of Antonio Villarigosa for Governor of California.

The former Los Angeles Mayor is running solely on the charter issue, which is the source of his biggest campaign contributions.

Who knew that the California governor’s race would be determined by a single issue: Do you support public schools or charter schools?

The gubernatorial campaign of former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa got another big boost this week when William Oberndorf, a San Francisco philanthropist and ally of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, contributed $2 million to a committee set up by charter school advocates to promote the former Los Angeles mayor’s bid to be the next governor of California.

Oberndorf, a Republican and major GOP donor, replaced DeVos as chairperson of American Federation for Children in 2016 when she was named by Donald Trump to join his cabinet.

The goal of the organization which DeVos co-founded is to promote greater “school choice” for parents, especially low-income ones, by providing taxpayer supported subsidies to offset the cost of private school tuition. That could include vouchers, tax credits, education savings accounts and other strategies.

Oberndorf’s contribution went to Families and Teachers for Antonio Villaraigosa, an independent expenditure committee established by the Charter School Association of California Advocates. Under state law, the committee can promote a candidate but can not coordinate their activities with the candidate’s campaign.

Also this week former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg contributed another $1 million to the pro-Villaraigosa committee, to supplement the $1.5 million he had already contributed earlier this month.

Their contributions bring the total amount raised by the committee to just over $16 million over the past month, mostly contributed by a handful of high-wealth individuals. With these funds, the committee has been running television ads and sending out colorful materials to boost Villaraigosa’s odds in the June 5 primary.

Categories Betsy DeVos, California, Charter Schools, Privatization

EdNext: Charter School Rate of Growth Drops to an All-Time Low

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2018 //
12

Education Next, the pro-charter, Pro-Choice publication, reports that the growth of charter schools fell to an all-time low of only 1% between 2017 and 2018.

Despite the $200 Million the Waltons give annually for charters, despite the hundreds of millions of federal dollars for new charters, the rate of growth has slowed. How is this possible?

“Despite educating more than 3.2 million students, the annual rate of charter school growth has reached an all-time low: a 1 percent increase in charter schools during the 2017-18 school year. This represents the fourth consecutive year that charter growth has slowed. In an article in our Summer 2018 issue of Education Next, Robin J. Lake, Trey Cobb, Roohi Sharma and Alice Opalka discuss barriers to charter-school growth in the San Francisco Bay Area and explore what charter leaders, policymakers, and communities can do to regain momentum and keep pace with demand. Derrell Bradford also addresses the slowing growth-rate of charter schools in our Summer 2018 issue, asking: what is the future role of single-site schools, given that charter management organizations (CMOs) and for-profit education management organizations (EMOs) are increasingly crowding the field? Finally, Adam Peshek proposes a way to tackle some of the obstacles to charter-school growth through the Opportunity Zone program (part of the 2017 tax reform package)—and hopefully create more high-quality public school options for children along the way.

—Education Next”

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

NEPC’s 6th Annual Report on Full-Time Virtual and Blended Schools:

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2018 //
15

The National Education Policy Center released its sixth annual report on full-time virtual and blended learning schools. The report was written by Gary Miron, Christopher Shank, and Caryn Davidson of Western Michigan University.

As in the past, these schools get worse results than traditional public schools. Nevertheless, their enrollments continue to grow.

“Compared to prior years, there has been a shift in source of growth, with more school dis- tricts opening their own virtual schools. However, these district-run schools have typically been small, with limited enrollment. Thus, while large virtual schools operated by for-profit education management organizations (EMOs) have lost considerable market share, they still dominate this sector.”

“This report provides a census of full-time virtual and blended schools. It also includes stu- dent demographics, state-specific school performance ratings, and—where possible—an analysis of school performance measures.

“• In 2016-17, 429 full-time virtual schools enrolled 295,518 students, and 296 blended schools enrolled 116,716. Enrollments in virtual schools increased by 17,000 students between 2015-16 and 2016-17 and enrollments in blended learn- ing schools increased by 80,000 during this same time period.

“• Thirty-four states had full-time virtual schools and 29 states had blended schools. Four states had blended but no full-time virtual schools (Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey and Rhode Island). Nine states had virtual schools but no full-time blended learning schools. The number of states with virtual schools in 2016-17 is the same as in 2015-16, although there was an increase of eight states with full- time blended learning schools over the past two years.

“• Virtual schools operated by for-profit EMOs were three times as large as other virtual schools. They enrolled an average of 1,288 students. In contrast, those op- erated by nonprofit EMOs enrolled an average of 407 students, and independent virtual schools (not affiliated with an EMO) enrolled an average of 411 students.

“• Although private (profit and nonprofit) EMOs operated only 35.9% of full-time virtual schools, those schools enrolled 61.8% of all virtual school students.

“• Just under half of all virtual schools in the inventory were charter schools, but to- gether they accounted for 75.7% of enrollment. While districts have been increas- ingly creating their own virtual schools, those tended to enroll far fewer students.

“• In the blended sector, nonprofit EMOs operated 30.4% and for-profit EMOs op- erated 22.6%. Nearly half (47%) of blended schools were independent. Blend- ed schools operated by nonprofits were most numerous and substantially larger than others in the sector. Rocketship Education remained the largest nonprofit operator, with 16 schools that enrolled just over 7,700 students—almost 7% of all students in blended schools.

“• Blended schools enrolled an average of 394 students, but blended schools man- aged by for-profit EMOs had a far larger average enrollment of 1,288. There were more charter blended schools (68.9%) than district blended schools (31.1%), and they had substantially larger average enrollments (456) than district blended schools (257).”

There is much more, covering student demographics, student-teacher ratios, and student performance.

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

A Bizarre Report from The Century Foundation about Those Exceedingly Rare “Diverse” Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2018 //
18

The Century Foundation is a liberal think tank in New York City that is on the wrong side of the charter school debate. For years, it has issued reports claiming that charter schools would lead the way on racial integration. It’s not true, but TCF thinks that if it keeps saying it, it might someday be true.

Yesterday, TCF had a press conference to congratulate charter schools that were diverse by design. It identified 125 charter schools out of a sector of more than 6,000 charters.

To assert that charters are promoting diversity and integration requires cherry picking and willful blindness.

Last December, the AP reported that charter schools were among the nation’s most segregated schools. The AP said: “National enrollment data shows that charters are vastly over-represented among schools where minorities study in the most extreme racial isolation. As of school year 2014-2015, more than 1,000 of the nation’s 6,747 charter schools had minority enrollment of at least 99 percent, and the number has been rising steadily….

““Desegregation works. Nothing else does,” said Daniel Shulman, a Minnesota civil rights attorney. “There is no amount of money you can put into a segregated school that is going to make it equal.”

“Shulman singled out charter schools for blame in a lawsuit that accuses the state of Minnesota of allowing racially segregated schools to proliferate, along with achievement gaps for minority students. Minority-owned charters have been allowed wrongly to recruit only minorities, he said, as others wrongly have focused on attracting whites.”

Andre Perry, a one-time charter leader in New Orleans, has called out charter advocates for their indifference to segregation. See his article for Brookings here, where charter leaders say they really don’t care about integration. Perry was even more blunt in an article posted on The Hechinger Report, where he said that any educational reform that ignores segregation is doomed to fail.” And he included charter schools on his doomed-to-fail list of reforms.

If charters were doing such a terrific job promoting integration, which they most definitely are not, why would the National NAACP have passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on new charters?

The UCLA Civil Rights Project has repeatedly called out charter schools for causing more segregation. Look what they said about the role of charters in promoting segregation in the once well-integrated Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools in North Carolina. (January, 2018)

“Charter Schools in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County are directly and indirectly undermining school district efforts to desegregate public schools, according to a new study released today by the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA with researchers at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

“Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools were once the nation’s bellwether for successful desegregation. Today, the district exemplifies how charter schools can impede districts’ efforts to resist re-segregation,” said Roslyn Arlin Mickelson, UNC Charlotte’s Chancellor’s Professor and professor of Sociology, Public Policy and Women’s and Gender Studies at UNC Charlotte. “This research has important implications not only for schools and communities in the Charlotte Mecklenburg region, but for the national debate over the growth and role of charter schools in our nation’s education system.”

In its 2017 study of segregation in Washington, D.C., the UCLA team concluded that the city’s charter schools “have the most extreme segregation in the city.”

Given that the overwhelming evidence from reputable sources—nationally and internationally—says that charter schools and choice are drivers of segregation, why is The Century Foundation supporting the agenda of Betsy DeVos and the Trump administration?

Perhaps this explains The Century Foundation’s charter love: “This case study is part of The Century Foundation’s project on charter school diversity, funded by The Walton Family Foundation.” The Walton Family Foundation is the rightwing, anti-union, anti-public school foundation of the family made billionaires by the non-union Walmart empire. The Walton Family Foundation is spending $200 million a year to expand charter schools. Ninety percent of charter schools are non- union. Walton has given tens of millions to Teach for America to create a ready supply of inexperienced, non-union, non-career teachers for charter schools.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, School Choice, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration

DeVos Puts Former For-Profit Executive in Charge of Undoing Regulations that Protect Students Defrauded by His Former Employer

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2018 //
26

This is a scandal.

When Betsy DeVos was appointed as Secretary of Education, she held investments in the for-profit higher education sector, which is known for fraud, high attrition, and low graduation rates. Presumably, she divested, but it is not clear whether she did.

Now she has turned over the job of revising regulations of the for-profit colleges to former high-level executives from the same sector.

Does anyone doubt that their mission is to remove all constraints on these quasi-criminal enterprises that have defrauded millions of students and gotten away scot-free?

Education Department adviser Robert Eitel, hired by the Trump administration last February after four years in the for-profit college industry, played a role in suspending an Obama-era policy known as “borrower defense to repayment.” The rule made it easier for students, enticed into taking out five-figure loans on promises that they would get good jobs, to file for debt relief. It also allowed the government to recoup the losses from the schools.

Ultimately, those potentially most impacted include many predominantly low-income, and minority students disproportionately represented at for-profit colleges and often saddled with high student loans and facing poor job prospects.

Education policy changes involving for-profit colleges has been a touchy subject since Secretary Betsy DeVos, who entered office with investments tied to the for-profit college sector, took over the department following Trump’s election.

The revelations about Eitel’s engagement in borrower defense policy come on the heels of a New York Times report that the department has been dismantling a team investigating widespread abuses by for-profit colleges. Education spokeswoman Liz Hill told the Times the group shrunk because of attrition and said no new hires with ties to the for-profit college industry had influenced the group’s work.

Eitel, who had also worked as an Education Department attorney under President George W. Bush, isn’t the only for-profit college executive DeVos has brought into the Department. The secretary also drew ire when she tapped Julian Schmoke, Jr., a former dean at the for-profit college DeVry, to lead the department’s Student Aid Enforcement Unit last August.

There’s no indication Schmoke was involved in the delay of the borrower defense rule.

Eitel — a former vice president at two for-profit college operators, Bridgepoint Education and Career Education Corp. — joined the Trump administration in February as part of a so-called “beachhead team” formed to usher the agency through the transition.

For two months, he worked at the Education Department while on unpaid leave from Bridgepoint, according to financial disclosure forms. He formally gave up his position at Bridgepoint in April, when he was hired on a permanent basis as a senior adviser to DeVos.

Although Education Departments ethics officials maintain working on borrower defense wouldn’t have violated his ethics agreement, Eitel has up until now refused to say publicly whether he had a hand in the borrower defense delay.

Eitel’s Involvement in Borrower Defense

On June 14, DeVos announced she was suspending the borrower defense rule, arguing that under the rule, “all one had to do was raise his or her hands to be entitled to so-called free-money.”

Emails obtained by the executive branch watchdog group Democracy Forward and shared with ABC News show in the days leading up to the announcement, Eitel circulated borrower defense talking points to staffers, edited background documents, and even signed off on the official delay notice.

This is a classic case of the fox guarding the henhouse. Or worse.

Is this Trump University’s Revenge?

Categories Betsy DeVos, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Higher Education, Privatization, Student Financial Aid and Student Debt

California: Billionaires for Charter Schools Funding Villaraigosa for Governor

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2018 //
8

The Los Angeles Times reports that the campaign of former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is funded almost entirely by billionaire charter supporters.

Reed Hastings, who once expressed his wish to see every local school board extinguished, has given the candidate $7 Million. Hastings want every school to be a charter.

Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently gave the candidate $1.5 million.

If Villaraigosa is elected, the state board will greenlight every charter application. Oversight and accountability for charters is currently lax to minimal. Under Villaraigosa, they would disappear. The scams and frauds would have a picnic with taxpayers’ money. That’s what Hastings, Bloomberg, Broad, and Riordan are paying for.

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

Mercedes Schneider: Is the BASIS Charter Chain a Financial Pyramid Scheme?

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2018 //
18

Mercedes Schneider thinks she has figured out the BASIS financial model by studying its tax returns over the years. She writes that it’s owners, Michael and Olga Block, keep expanding because the chain needs more revenue.

She goes through the BASIS returns year by year. Every time they open a new school, they get more revenue—and more debt.

“That seems to be the secret to its financial sauce: Use the revenue generated from opening new schools to make money while forestalling the crash of snowballing debt.”

She writes:

“What do you call an investment where you have to keep bringing in more investors?

“A fraud.

“Consider the following from Investopedia regarding pyramid schemes:

The process continues until the base of the pyramid is no longer strong enough to support the upper structure, and there are no more recruits.

“The problem is that the scheme cannot go on forever….

“The fraud lies in the fact that it is impossible for the cycle to sustain itself….

“In the case of Basis schools, Michael and Olga Block cannot go on opening new schools ad infinitum.

“If they are dependent upon opening new schools (as they seem to be), they are setting up all Basis schools for financial collapse.

“Basis Schools:

“$274 million in long-term debt as of June 30, 2017, according to its FY 2017 audit.”

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

What You Need to Know About the Top Charter Chain in the Nation

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2018 //
38

The highest ranked charters in the nation, based on graduation rates, test scores, AP courses passed, etc., are the BASIS schools of Arizona.

Two articles tell you what you need to know to understand their “secret sauce.”

Carol Burris reports here on their demographics and attrition rate. Their top-performing schools are overwhelmingly white and Asian, with few Hispanic, African American, or Native American students, and few students with disabilities. They lose most of their students between 7th grade and 12th grade.

Craig Harris of the Arizona Republic details the BASIS business model here. The charters are owned by a private, for-profit company created by the founders Michael and Olga Block. They collect a sizable portion of the schools’ revenues (“According to an agreement between Basis Schools and Basis.ed, the Blocks’ private firm keeps 11.75 percent of all school revenues — state, federal and local tax dollars — for management fees”). They recently bought an $8.4 Million condo in New York City to be closer to private schools they own there. Their company, the article says, received $14 million in management fees last year. The charters pay their teachers less than the average Arizona teachers’ salary, but they are less experienced. Teachers get more money because parents are asked to donate $1,500 per student per year, which is a bargain compared to private schools. Teachers get a bonus of $200 whenever a student gets a 5 on an AP exam. The average BASIS student takes a dozen AP exams and passes nearly all of them.

A reader on the blog added this comment:

Basis, the #1 school in the nation by Newsweek Magazine, 2017, graduated 44 students. 18 whites, the rest mostly Asians. No ELL, No Special Ed. Less than 8% Black/Hispanics. No free or reduced lunch. So, basically we’re saying privileged, upper socio-economic, gifted students.
In my last year of teaching, I had 45 in one room with 30 desks, not enough old texts to teach. Didn’t stay that way all year, but enough to impact teaching & learning.

Basis only teaches the gifted. Look a little deeper.

There you have it. The secret sauce. Accept everyone who applies. Get rid of the students who are unlikely to pass AP exams. Hire young teachers and pay less than underpaid public school teachers. Pay a bonus whenever students get a 5 on an AP exam. Create a culture of testtaking. Drop those who can’t do it. Solicit money from parents to pay teachers more.

Is it a model for public education? No. Public schools must keep all students, not just those most likely to pass tests.

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization

A Guide to the Corporations Defunding Public Schools and Opposing Striking Teachers

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2018 //
20

THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ARTICLE YOU WILL READ TODAY. SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS, YOUR SCHOOL BOARD, YOUR LOCAL MEDIA, YOUR ELECTEDS. TWEET IT. POST IT ON FACEBOOK.

In the states where teachers have engaged in walkouts and strikes, public education has been systematically starved of funding. Typically, corporate taxes have been cut so that funding for education has also been cut. The corporations benefit while the children and their teachers are put on a starvation diet.

Who are the corporations and individuals behind the efforts to shrink funding for public schools and promote privatization?

This article makes it clear.

It begins like this, then details a state-by-state list of corporations and billionaires backing the cycle of austerity and school privatization.

“The ongoing wave of teacher strikes across the US is changing the conversation about public education in this country. From West Virginia to Arizona, Kentucky to Oklahoma, Colorado to North Carolina, tens of thousands of teachers have taken to the streets and filled state capitals, garnering public support and racking up victories in some of the nation’s most hostile political terrain.

“Even though the teachers who have gone on strike are paid well below the national average, their demands have gone beyond better salary and benefits for themselves. They have also struck for their students’ needs – to improve classroom quality and to increase classroom resources. Teachers are calling for greater investment in children and the country’s public education system as a whole. They are also demanding that corporations, banks, and billionaires pay their fair share to invest in schools.

“The teachers’ strikes also represent a major pushback by public sector workers against the right-wing agenda of austerity and privatization. The austerity and privatization agenda for education goes something like this: impose big tax cuts for corporations and the .01% and then use declining tax revenue as a rationale to cut funding for state-funded services like public schools. Because they are underfunded, public schools cannot provide the quality education kids deserve. Then, the right wing criticizes public schools and teachers, saying there is a crisis in education. Finally, the right wing uses this as an opportunity to make changes to the education system that benefit them – including offering privatization as a solution that solves the crisis of underfunding.

“While this cycle has put students, parents, and teachers in crisis, many corporations, banks, and billionaires are driving and profiting from it. The key forces driving the austerity and privatization agenda are similar across all the states that have seen strikes:

“*Billionaire school privatizers. A small web of billionaires – dominated by the Koch brothers and their donor network, as well as the Waltons – have given millions to state politicians who will push their pro-austerity, pro-school privatization agenda. These billionaires lead a coordinated, nationwide movement to apply business principles to education, including: promoting CEO-like superintendents, who have business experience but little or no education experience; closing “failing” schools, just as companies close unprofitable stores or factories; aggressively cutting costs, such as by recruiting less experienced teachers; instituting a market-based system in which public schools compete with privately managed charter schools, religious schools, for-profit schools, and virtual schools; and making standardized test scores the ultimate measure of student success.”

Keep reading to learn about the interlocking web that includes the Koch brothers, the Mercers, the Waltons, the fossil fuel industry, their think tanks, and much more, all combined to shrink public schools and replace them with charters and vouchers.

By the way, rightwing billionaire Philip Anschutz of Colorado was the producer of the anti-teacher, anti-public education, pro-charter propaganda film “Waiting for Superman.”

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Arizona, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Colorado, Corporate Reformers, Dark Money, Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Privatization, Teacher Pay, Walton Foundation, West Virginia
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